With appreciation we acknowledge our collaborators who worked
with us in preparing several essays in this book. To John Shaughnessy, Thomas
Ludwig, John Brink, and Steven Hoogerwerf go our sincere thanks. We are indebted
to many friends and colleagues who read these essays in earlier form and offered
constructive suggestions and criticisms. Special thanks are also due Jean
Brasser and Kathy Adamski for their predictably excellent typing and
word-processing skills in the final preparation of the manuscript.

As is true in most cooperative efforts of this type, the primary
responsibility for the various chapters was divided between us. The authors
primarily responsible for each chapter are named in the table of contents.
Earlier versions of certain essays have appeared elsewhere:

THE COLLEGE BOARD recently
invited the million high-school seniors taking its aptitude test to indicate
"how you feel you compare with other people your own age in certain areas of
ability." Sixty per cent reported themselves as better than average in "athletic
ability." In "leadership ability" 70 per cent rated themselves as above average,
2per cent as below average. In "ability to get along with others," less
than 1per cent of the 829,000 students who responded rated them selves
as below average, 60 per cent rated themselves in the top 10 per cent, and 25
per cent saw themselves among the top 1 per cent.

Judging from the students' responses, America's high-school
seniors are hardly plagued with inferiority feelings. Why then do so many
psychologists and preachers lament our low self-esteem? How do we really feel
about ourselves - and what should we as Christians be doing about self-image?
Think back to last Sunday morning's sermon. Can you recall the major points or
the theme? Psychologist Thomas Crawford and his associates went to the homes of
people from twelve churches shortly before and after they heard a sermon
opposing racial injustice. When asked during the second interview whether they
had heard or read anything about racial prejudice or discrimination since the
previous interview, only 10 per cent spontaneously recalled the sermon. When the
remaining 90 per cent were asked directly whether their preacher "talked about
prejudice or discrimination in the last couple of weeks," more than 30 per cent
denied hearing such a sermon.

Is this typical of the impact of sermons? How might each of us
who must teach, speak or write do so with more effect than these preachers? And
what can we do to receive maximum benefit from what we hear and read?

Now imagine that you and some others have come to participate in
a psychological study of emotional cues. By what appears to be random choice,
one of the participants, actually an accomplice of the experimenter, is selected
to perform a memory task. She is to receive painful shocks for any error made
while you and the other participants note her emotional response. After watching
her grimace in response to a number of seemingly painful shocks, you are asked
to evaluate her. How will you respond? With compassion and sympathy? Probably
not. When observers are powerless to alter a victim's fate, they tend to reject
and devalue her - as ifsuch a bad thing couldn't happen to a good
person.

This research finding tells a lot about how we view victims of
oppression. Do we acknowledge that bad things can happen to good people? Or do
we just mirror the thoughts of Job's friends, believing that people get what
they deserve?

These three examples, taken from forthcoming chapters,
illustrate the broad concerns of social psychology. How we think about ourselves
and others (the ratings of the high-school seniors), influence one another (the
sermons) and relate to each other (the evaluations of the punished woman) are
what the discipline is all about. Certainly these are not new concerns.
Conformity and independence, love and hate, persuasion and peacemaking all form
the fabric of everyday life. They are familiar and visible - in poetry,
philosophy and theology, on the streets and in our churches.

While the questions social psychologists ask are hardly new,
their approach is unique. They look for answers through careful observation and
experimentation. This systematic, scientific approach to human social behavior
is a young discipline. It is, in fact, a twentieth-century phenomenon. And while
much mystery remains, important insights into human relationships are already
emerging.

In this book we hope to communicate some of the fascination of
the search, to present some of the more provocative findings and to consider the
implications of these findings for Christian belief and everyday life. These
issues, and therefore this book, are for all Christians who wrestle with the
task of living obediently and who want to influence others to make Jesus Christ
the Lord of their lives.

Believing, Influencing, Relating: A
Three-Part Study

Part I of our book explores recent research on how and what
people believe. Social psychologists have learned some surprising things
concerning the relationship of faith and works. Studies have also been done on
how we think about ourselves. What kinds of complexes do we really suffer from?
The findings provide a fresh retelling of ancient biblical wisdom. We will also
examine some disturbing new experiments which suggest how and why people come to
form false beliefs.

A fundamental aspect of our social nature is how we influence
and are influenced by our fellow human beings. In Part II we explore the nature
and extent of this social influence. For example, what kinds of messages are
most memorable and persuasive? Do rewards persuade too? We will look not only at
how persuasive rewards are, but how much actual constructive change they effect.
The implications for Christian parenting and Christian education are telling.
The scriptural command "Be not conformed..." will assume new meaning as we look
at how readily social forces shape our behavior and our beliefs. We will see how
"groupthink" creeps into the local church and suggest how we can think together
as Christians without falling into such traps.

Our social relationships provide the basis for our deepest
satisfactions as well as our most difficult challenges. Part III will explore
some of the central themes that run through our relationships with one another.
We will examine comparisons people make with each other and the strange
phenomenon of "poortalk" that often results. Analyzing the research done on
human attraction, we'll see what makes us naturally move toward certain people -
and compare that tendency with Christ's command to love. When will we offer aid
to those in need? Studies on altruism show how much our willingness to help is
influenced by situational factors. Our willingness may be further complicated by
our need to believe in a just world. Recent findings indicate that the "justice
motive" may lead to more than Christian compassion. We conclude Part III with
some of the key principles that are foundational for all Christian
peacemaking.

"It is not good that the man should be alone" (Gen 2:18 RSV).
And thus God created us interdependent, not self-sufficient; social, not
isolated. Join with us now as we explore some of psychology's recent findings
regarding our social nature and probe their significance for Christian faith and
practice.

Part
I

Believing

BELIEF IS CENTRAL in the
Christian life. Paul tells us we are saved by grace through faith. Jesus, during
the storm on the Sea of Galilee, asked his fearful disciples why they had so
little faith. How do we come to believe what we believe? How can we be sure that
what we believe is true?

Part I takes up these and related issues. Chapter two considers
how faith and obedience relate. Popular wisdom stresses the impact of our
attitudes on our actions. In the church, teaching and preaching follow this
thinking by aiming to change the heart, assuming obedience will follow. This
chapter examines the less commonsensical idea that behavior determines
beliefs.

Among our most central beliefs are those we hold about
ourselves. The notion that most of us suffer from unrealistically low
self-esteem has become widely accepted within the Christian community.
Presumably we need to develop a healthier, more positive self-image. Chapter
three looks at the other side of the coin. Do most people actually have a
"self-serving bias"? Is pride the more common error? Does an inflated
self-perception alienate us from God and lead us to disdain one another? How can
recognizing our pride as sin draw us to Christ and to a positive self-regard
rooted in his grace?

Objectivity - or the lack of it - can also drive a wedge between
people. While in the past social psychologists have viewed us as rational
animals, recently their attention has shifted to errors in our thinking that may
prejudice our judgments of others. Chapter four examines the way people form and
sustain false beliefs reinforces St. Paul's contention that human wisdom is not
nearly so wise as God's foolishness.

Chapter five asks, Why do people believe in paranormal events
and powers in the face of great evidence against their existence? The point is
not that psychic phenomena do not exist but that, whether they do or not,
illusory thinking almost guarantees that people will invent such beliefs. At
issue is our whole understanding of ourselves and others:

Do we have paranormal abilities? Or are we finite creatures of
the one who declares "I am God, and there is none like me"?

2

Behavior
and Belief

PEOPLE GENERALLY ASSUME
that our beliefs and attitudes determine our actions. So if we want to change
the way people act, their hearts and minds had better be changed. This
assumption lies behind most of our teaching, preaching, counseling and child
rearing. But if social psychology has taught us anything during the last twenty
years it is that the reverse is equally true: we are as likely to act ourselves
into a way of thinking as to think ourselves into action.

Let's take a peek at this action-attitude research, see how it
squares with the biblical understanding of faith and action, and then consider
practical implications for church life and Christian nurture.

Action and Attitude

Social psychologists agree that attitudes and actions have a
reciprocal relationship, each feeding on the

other (figure 1). In fact, the effect of our attitudes on our
actions seems not so great as most people suppose.1The attitudes people express toward the church, for example, are only
moderately related to their church attendance on any given Sunday. The fact is,
any particular action, such as going or not going to church on June 1, is the
product of many influences, not just one's attitude toward the church. So it is
not surprising that attempts to change people's behavior by changing their
attitudes often produce only modest results. Habits like smoking, television
watching and bad driving practices are not affected much by persuasive
appeals.2

Although attitudes determine our behavior less than commonly
supposed, the complementary proposition - that behavior determines attitude -
turns out to be far more true than most people think. We are as likely to
believe in what we have stood up for as to stand up for what we believe. Many
streams of evidence converge to establish this principle. Consider
two:

The foot-in-the-doorphenomenon.A number
of experiments indicate that if you want people to do a big favor for you, it's
wise to get them to do a small favor first. In the best-known demonstration of
this, Jonathan Freedman and Scott Fraser wanted California housewives to place a
large, ugly "Drive Carefully" sign on their front lawns. Tests showed that they
were more likely to do this if they had first been asked to do the smaller favor
of signing a safe driving petition.3

In this situation, as in countless other experiments
demonstrating the effect of action on attitude, the behavior (signing the
petition) was a chosen, public act. Time and again, social psychologists have
found that when people bind themselves to public behavior and perceive this as
their own doing, they come to believe more strongly in their action. Also, the
effect on the housewives' attitudes was evident in their subsequent willingness
to perform an even more substantial action, demonstrating the reciprocal
influence of action and attitude.

Sometimes action and attitude feed one another in a spiraling
escalation. In his well-known experiments, Stanley Milgram induced adult men to
deliver supposedly traumatizing electric shocks to an innocent victim in an
adjacent room.4People were commanded to deliver the
shock (said to be punishment for wrong answers on a learning task) in steps
gradually increasing from 15 to 450 volts. The troubling result - that 65 per
cent of the participants complied right up to 450 volts even while the supposed
victim screamed his protests - seems partly due to an effective use of the foot
in-the-door principle. Their first act was trivial (15 volts), and the next (30
volts) was not noticeably more severe. By the time the supposed victim first
indicated mild discomfort the participant had already bound himself to the
situation on several occasions, and the next act was, again, not noticeably more
severe. External behavior and internal disposition can amplify one another,
especially when social pressures induce actions that are increasingly extreme.
And so it is that ordinary people can become unwitting agents of
evil.

Effects of moral and immoral acts. All this suggests
the more general possibility that acting in violation of one's moral standards
may set in motion a process of self-justification which leads ultimately to
sincere belief in the act. Experiments bear this out. People induced to give
witness to something about which they have doubts will generally begin to
believe their "little lies," at least if they felt some sense of choice in the
matter. Saying is believing. Likewise, harming an innocent victim - by muttering
a cutting comment or delivering shocks - typically leads aggressors to disparage
their victims, especially if the aggressors are coaxed rather than coerced into
doing so.5Wartime provides the most tragic
real-life parallel to these laboratory findings: here we know too well how
immoral acts corrode the moral sensitivity of the actors.

Fortunately, the principle cuts in the other direction as well.
Moral action has positive effects on the actor. Experiments demonstrate that
when children are induced to resist temptation, they tend to internalize their
conscientious behavior, especially if the deterrent is mild enough to leave them
with a sense of choice.6Moreover, children who are
actively engaged in enforcing rules or in teaching moral norms to younger
children subsequently follow the moral code better than children who are not
given the opportunity to be teachers or enforcers.7Generalizing the principle, it would seem that one antidote for
the corrupting effects of evil action is repentant action. Evil acts shape the
self, but moral acts do so as well.

These few examples illustrate why the attitudes-follow-behavior
principle has become an accepted theory in contemporary social psychology. Since
the phenomenon is more clearly established than its explanation, social
psychologists have been busy playing detective, trying to track down clues that
would reveal why action affects attitude. One explanation suggests that we are
motivated to justify our actions as a way of relieving the discomfort we feel
when our behavior differs noticeably from our prior attitude. An alternative
explanation is that when our attitudes are weak or ambiguous, we observe our
actions and then infer what attitudes we must have, given how we have acted.
What we say and do can sometimes be quite self-revealing! Neither of these views
necessarily implies that the effect of action is a mindless irrational process.
Our thinking is stimulated by our action. The reasons we develop to explain our
actions can be real and intellectually defensible. As one student explained, "It
wasn't until I tried to verbalize my beliefs that found I was really able to
understand them."

Regardless of what explanation is best, we can find a practical
moral for us all: each time we act, we strengthen the idea behind what we have
done. We increase our inclination to act in the same way again. If we want to
change ourselves in some important way, we had better not depend exclusively on
introspection and intellectual insight. Some times we need to get up and do
something - begin writing that paper, make those phone calls, go see that person
- even if we do not feel like moving. If Moses, Jonah and others had waited
until they felt like doing what God was calling them to do, their missions would
never have been accomplished. (Indeed, if not acted on, ideas often begin to
fade until recharged by new action.) Fortunately, we often discover that once we
have written the first paragraph or made the first call, our commitment and
enthusiasm for what we are doing begins to take hold of us and drive us forward
with its own momentum.

Action and Faith

The social psychological evidence that action and attitude
generate one another in an endless chain - like chicken and egg - affirms and
enlivens the biblical understanding of action and faith. Depending on where we
break into this spiraling chain, we will see how faith can be a source of action
or how it can be a consequence of action. Both perspectives are correct, since
action and faith, like action and attitude, feed one another.

Christian thinking has usually emphasized faith as the source of
action, just as conventional wisdom has insisted that our attitudes determine
our behavior. Faith, we believe, is the beginning rather than the end of
religious development. For example, the experience of being "called"
demonstrates how faith can precede action in the lives of the faithful. Elijah
is overwhelmed by the Holy as he huddles in a cave. Paul is touched by the
Almighty on the Damascus Road. Ezekiel, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Amos are likewise
invaded by the Word, which then explodes in their active response to the call.
In each case, an encounter with God provoked a new state of consciousness which
was then acted on.

This dynamic potential of faith is already a central tenet of
evangelical thought. For the sake of balance, we should also appreciate the
complementary proposition: Faith is a consequence of action. Throughout the Old
and New Testaments we are told that full knowledge of God comes through actively
doing the Word. Faith is nurtured by obedience.

Reinhold Niebuhr and others have called attention to the
contrast in assumptions between biblical thought and the Platonic thought that
permeates our Western culture today. Plato presumed that we come to know truth
by reason and quiet reflection. This view, translated into Christian terms,
equates faith with cerebral activity - orthodox doctrinal propositions, for
example.

The contrasting biblical view assumes that reality is known
through obedient commitment. As O. A. Piper has written in the Interpreter's
Dictionary of the Bible, "This feature, more than any other, brings out the
wide gulf which separates the Hebraic from the Greek view of knowledge. In the
latter, knowledge itself is purely theoretical... whereas in the Old Testament
the person who does not act in accordance with what God has done or plans to do
has but a fragmentary knowledge."8For example, the
Hebrew word for know is generally used as a verb, something you do. To
know love, we must not only know about love but we must act lovingly. Likewise,
to hear the word of God means not only to listen but also to obey.

We read in the New Testament that by loving action a person
knows God, for "he who does what is true comes to the light" (Jn 3:21 RSV).
Jesus declared that whoever would do the will of God would know God, that he
would come and dwell within those who heed what he said, and that we would find
ourselves not by passive contemplation but by losing ourselves as we take up the
cross. The wise man, the one who built his house on rock, differed from the
foolish man in that he acted on God's Word. Merely saying "Lord, Lord" does not
qualify us as disciples; discipleship means doing the will of the Father. Over
and over again, the Bible teaches that gospel power can only be known by living
it.

Our theological understanding of faith is built on this biblical
view of knowledge. Faith grows as we act on what little faith we have. Just as
experimental subjects become more deeply committed to something for which they
have suffered and witnessed, so also do we grow in faith as we act it out. Faith
"is born of obedience," said John Calvin. "The proof of Christianity really
consists in 'following,' "declared Soren Kierkegaard. Karl Barth agreed: "Only
the doer of the Word is its real hearer."

C. S. Lewis captured this dynamic of faith in his Chronicles of
Narnia. The great lion Aslan has returned to Narnia to redeem his captive
creatures. Lucy, a young girl with a trusting, childlike faith in Aslan, catches
a glimpse of him and eventually convinces the others in her party to start
walking toward where she sees him. As Lucy follows Aslan, she comes to see him
more clearly. The others, skeptical and grumbling at first, follow despite their
doubts. Only as they follow do they begin to see what was formerly invisible to
them - first a fleeting hint of the lion, then his shadow, until finally, after
many steps, they see him face to face. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer concluded in
The Cost of Discipleship, "Only he who believes is obedient, and only
he who is obedient believes.... You can only know and think about it by actually
doing it."9

Christians will surely want to understand and communicate their
faith as rationally defensible. Yet when Jesus counseled that the kingdom of God
belongs to those who come like a child, he reminded us that codified
intellectual understanding need not precede faith. Jesus called people to follow
him, not just to believe in a creed. Peter dropped his nets, leaving all behind,
when Jesus called him. Only much later did he verbalize his conviction with the
declaration: "You are the Christ." Although we must remember that justification
is the gift of God - Peter does not achieve his own conversion - the meaning of
faith is nevertheless learned through obedient action.

Implications for Church Life and Christian
Nurture

How can we apply these principles to, say, leading a church, to
planning worship, and to nurturing personal faith? First, a top priority for
churches must be to make their members active participants, not mere spectators.
Many dynamic religious movements today, ranging from sects like the Jehovah's
Witnesses, Mormons and the Unification Church to charismatics and
discipleship-centered communities, share an insistence that all on board be
members of the crew. That is easier said than done, but it does provide a
criterion by which to evaluate procedures for admitting and maintaining members.
As a local church makes decisions and administers its program, it should
constantly be asking, Will this activate our people and make priests of our
believers? If research on persuasion is any indication, this will best be
accomplished by direct, personal calls to committed action, not merely by mass
appeals and announcements.

In worship, too, people should be engaged as active
participants, not as mere spectators of religious theater. Research indicates
that passively received spoken words have surprisingly little impact on
listeners. Changes in attitude resulting from spoken persuasion are less likely
to endure and influence subsequent behavior than attitude changes emerging from
active experience.10What's needed is to have listeners
rehearse and act on what they hear. If the church is liturgical, then the
congregation needs to participate actively in the ritual. The public act of
choosing to get out of one's seat and kneel publicly before the congregation in
taking Communion is but one example. Going forward to demonstrate repentance or
commitment, giving a public testimony or participating in believers' baptism are
others. When the people sing responses, write their own confessions, contribute
prayer, read Scripture responsively, take notes on the sermon, utter
exclamations, bring their offerings forward, pass the peace, make the sign of
the cross, or sit, stand and kneel - acts that viewers of the electronic church
do not perform - they are making their worship their own.

The principle has its limits, of course. We can become so
preoccupied with doing things that we no longer have time to quietly receive
God's Word of grace and direction for our lives. Like the Pharisees, we can
substitute our deeds for God's act, or think that any kind of action will do. To
say that action nurtures growth in faith is not to tell the whole story of
faith. But it does tell part of the story.

The action-attitude principle can also help us with Christian
education and Christian nurture. Since researchers have found that the attitudes
we form by experience are most likely to affect our actions, we might consider
new methods of encouraging faith. For example, few Christian families appreciate
and reap the benefits of family worship. Old Testament family practices helped
people remember the mighty acts of God. When today's Jewish family celebrates
the Passover by eating special foods, reading prayers and singing psalms, all of
which symbolize their historical experience, they are helped to renew the roots
of deep convictions and feelings. As Tevye exclaimed in Fiddler on the
Roof, "Because of our traditions every one of us knows who he is and
what God expects him to do.... Without our traditions our lives would be as
shaky as a fiddler on the roof." Among Christians, family celebrations are
becoming more common during Advent. With a boost from the church, home-based
activity could be extended to celebrate all the great themes of the church
year.

Although church and family ritual may sometimes degenerate into
a superficial religious exercise, few of us appreciate the extent to which the
natural ritual of our own personal histories has shaped who we are. Many of the
things we did without question in childhood have long since be come an enduring
part of our self-identities. Indeed, because we have internalized our own
rituals, we find it difficult to recognize them as rituals; but it is easy to
recognize other people's rituals.

The overarching objective on which all these points converge is
this: we want to create opportunities for people to enact their convictions,
thereby confirming and strengthening their Christian identity. Biblical and
psychological perspectives link arms in reminding us that faith is like love. If
we hoard it, it will shrivel. If we use it, exercise it and express it, we will
have it more abundantly.

3

The Inflated Self: A New
Look at Pride

Poised somewhere between sinful vanity and self-destructive
submissiveness is a golden mean of self-esteem appropriate to the human
condition. -Stanford Lyman

THERE IS NO DOUBT about it.
High self-esteem pays dividends. Those with a positive self-image are happier,
freer of ulcers and insomnia, less prone to drug and alcohol addictions.
Researchers have also found that people whose ego is temporarily deflated - say,
by being told that they did miserably on an intelligence test - are more likely
to disparage other people or even express heightened racial prejudice. More
generally, people who are negative about themselves tend to be negative about
others. Low self-esteem can feed contemptuous attitudes.

What people believe about themselves can have a profound impact
on their lives. Those who believe they can control their own destiny - who have
what researchers in more than a thousand studies have called "internal locus of
control" - achieve more, make more money and are less vulnerable to being
manipulated.1Believe that things are beyond your
control, and they probably will be. Believe that you can do it, and maybe you
will.

Knowing this may encourage us not to resign ourselves to bad
situations but to persist despite initial failures, to strive without being
derailed by self-doubts. But as Pascal taught, no single truth is ever
sufficient because the world is not simple. Any truth separated from its
complementary truth is a half-truth. That high self-esteem and positive thinking
pay dividends is true. But in heralding this truth let us not forget another
more disturbing truth - the truth about the pervasiveness and the pitfalls of
pride. To remind us of this neglected second truth, consider social psychology's
new look at pride.

The Self-serving Bias

It is popularly believed that most of us suffer the "I'm not OK
- You're OK" type of low self-esteem. As Groucho Marx put it, "I'd never join
any club that would accept a person like me." Carl Rogers described this low
self-image problem when he objected to Reinhold Niebuhr's idea that original sin
is self-love, pretention, pride. No, no, replied Rogers, Niebuhr had it
backwards. People's problems arise because "they despise themselves, regard
themselves as worthless and unlovable."

The issue between Niebuhr and Rogers is very much alive today.
And what an intriguing irony it is that so many Christian writers are now
echoing Rogers and the other prophets of humanistic psychology at the very time
that research psychologists are amassing new data concerning the pervasiveness
of pride. Indeed, the orthodox theologians, not the humanistic psychologists,
seem closer to the truth. As writer William Saroyan put it, "Every man is a good
man in a bad world--as he himself knows."

Researchers are debating the reasons for the phenomenon of the
self-serving bias, but they now generally agree that it is both genuine and
potent. Six streams of data merge to form a powerful river of
evidence.

Stream 1:Accepting more responsibility for success
than failure, for good deeds than bad. Time and again experimenters have
found that people readily accept credit when told they have succeeded
(attributing the success to their ability and effort), yet attribute failure to
such external factors as bad luck or the situation's inherent "impossibility."
Similarly, in explaining their victories athletes have been observed to credit
themselves, but they are more likely to attribute losses to something else: bad
breaks, bad officiating, the other team's super effort. Situations that combine
skill and chance (games, exams, job applications) are especially prone to the
phenomenon. Winners easily attribute their success to their skill, while losers
attribute their losses to chance. When I win at Scrabble it's because of my
verbal dexterity; when I lose it's because "who could get anywhere with a Q but
no U?"

Michael Ross and Fiore Sicoly at the University of Waterloo
observed a marital version of self-serving bias.2They found that married people usually gave themselves more credit for
such activities as cleaning the house and caring for the children than their
spouses were willing to credit them for. Every night, my wife and I pitch our
laundry at the bedroom clothes hamper. In the morning, one of us puts them in.
Recently she suggested that I take more responsibility for this. Thinking that I
already did so75 per cent of the time, I asked her how often she thought
she picked up the clothes. "Oh," she replied, "about 75 per cent of the
time."

Stream 2: Favorably biased self-ratings: Can we all be
better than average? On nearly any dimension that is both subjective and
socially desirable, most people see themselves as better than
average.3Most American business people, for
example, see themselves as more ethical than the average American business
person. Most community residents see themselves as less prejudiced than others
in their communities. Most French people perceive themselves as superior to
their peers in a variety of socially desirable ways. Most drivers, even among
those who have been hospitalized for accidents, believe themselves to be more
skillful than the average driver.

The College Board recently invited the million high- school
seniors taking its aptitude test to indicate "how you feel you compare with
other people your own age in certain areas of ability." Judging from the
students' responses America's high-school seniors are not plagued with
inferiority feelings. Sixty per cent reported themselves as better than average
in "athletic ability," only 6 per cent as below average. In "leadership ability"
70 per cent rated themselves as above average, 2per cent as below
average. In "ability to get along with others," less than 1per cent of
the 829,000 students who responded rated themselves below average, 60 per cent
rated themselves in the top 10 per cent, and 25 per cent saw themselves among
the top 1per cent. To paraphrase Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the
question seems to be "How do I love me? Let me count the ways."

Stream 3: Self-justification: If I did it, it must be
good. If we have done something undesirable that cannot be forgotten,
misremembered or undone, then often we justify it. In chapter two we noted how
social psychological research has established that past actions influence our
current attitudes. Every time we act, we amplify the idea lying behind what we
have done, especially if we feel some responsibility for having committed the
act. In experiments, people who oppress someone - by delivering electric shocks,
for example - tend later to disparage their victim. Such self-justification is
all the more dangerous when manifest in group settings: Iran justified its
taking of hostages as a just response to morally reprehensible American policies
in Iran; the United States saw the moral lunacy on the other side. So everyone
felt righteous, and a stand-off resulted.

Stream 4: Cognitive conceit: Belief in our personal
infallibility. Researchers who study human thinking have often observed
that people overestimate the accuracy of their beliefs and judgments. So
consistently does this happen that one prominent researcher has referred to this
human tendency as "cognitive conceit."

The I-knew-it-all-along attitude demonstrates this phenomenon.
Often we do not expect something to happen until it does, at which point we
overestimate our likelihood to have predicted it. Researchers have found that
people who are told the outcome of an experimental or historical situation are
less surprised at the outcome than people told only about the situation and its
possible outcomes.4Indeed, almost any result of a
psychological experiment can seem like common sense - after you know the result.
The phenomenon can be demonstrated by giving half a group some purported
psychological finding and the other half the opposite result. For
example:

Social psychologists have found that, whether choosing friends
or falling in love, we are most attracted to people whose traits are different
from our own. There seems to be wisdom in the old saying that "opposites
attract."

Social psychologists have found that, whether choosing friends
or falling in love, we are most attracted to people whose traits are similar to
our own. There seems to be wisdom in the old saying that "birds of a feather
flock together."

Have people (1) write an explanation for whichever finding they
were given, and (2) judge whether their finding is "surprising" or "not
surprising." In hindsight, either result can seem obvious so that virtually all
will say "not surprising." "Anyone could have told you that."

Many of the conclusions presented in this book may have already
occurred to you. In retrospect, doesn't the action-attitude principle discussed
in chapter two seem quite obvious? Likewise, do we really need research
psychologists to rediscover the pervasiveness of pride? And let's look ahead to
some of the equally obvious ideas to be examined in future chapters:

1. Human reason is sound; hence, given a
reasonable exposition of Christianity, people can be held responsible for making
a rational decision to choose faith (chapters four and six).

2. Paranormal happenings, documented by
science, testify to realities beyond nature and even point to demonic
supernatural powers (chapter five).

3. People will become most committed to those beliefs and
actions they perceive to be personally rewarding (chapter seven).

4. Teaching our children to be more independent
is the best way to deal with the problem of "conformity to this world" (chapter
eight).

5. The greater the cohesiveness among members
of a local church, the more likely they will grow in faith and practice (chapter
nine).

6. The combined effects of two decades of
inflation and recession have created an economic mess that has eroded our buying
power (chapter ten).

7. Although we certainly note and admire
physical beauty, appearance is not a major factor in our evaluations of others.
Beauty is, after all, only skin deep (chapter eleven).

8. Selfishness is the overriding reason people fail to
help those in distress (chapter twelve).

If all of these ideas seem as obvious as those presented thus
far, be forewarned! The chapters that follow will challenge these myths, just as
we have already sought to refute the myths that the heart must change before
behavior does and that most people suffer from self-deprecation.

By the time we finish, however, their opposites may also seem
commonsensical. They are readily supported by a stockpile of ancient proverbs.
Since nearly every possible outcome is conceivable, wise sayings await every
occasion. Are "two heads better than one?" Or do "too many cooks spoil the
broth"? Is "a penny saved a penny earned," or is it "pennywise, pound foolish"?
If a social psychologist reports that separation intensifies romantic
attraction, some one is sure to reply, "Of course: 'Absence makes the heart grow
fonder.' " Should it turn out the reverse, the same person may remind us, "Out
of sight, out of mind." No matter what happens, someone would have known it all
along.

Stream 5: Unrealistic optimism: The Pollyanna syndrome.
Margaret Matlin and David Stang have amassed evidence pointing to a powerful
Pollyanna principle - that people more readily perceive, remember and
communicate pleasant than unpleasant information.5Positive thinking predominates over negative thinking.

In recent research with Rutgers University students, Neil
Weinstein has further discerned a tendency toward "unrealistic optimism about
future life events."6Most students perceived
themselves as far more likely than their classmates to experience positive
events such as getting a good job, drawing a good salary and owning a home, and
as far less likely to experience negative events such as getting divorced,
having cancer and being fired. Likewise, most college students believe they will
easily outlive their actuarially predicted age of death (which calls to mind
Freud's joke about the man who told his wife, "If one of us should die, I think
I would go live in Paris").

Stream 6: Overestimating how desirably we would act.
Researchers have found that under certain conditions most people will act in
rather inconsiderate, compliant or even cruel ways. When similar people are told
in detail about these conditions and asked to predict how they would act,
however, nearly all insist that their own behavior would be far more virtuous.
When researcher Steven Sherman called Bloomington, Indiana, residents and asked
them to volunteer three hours to an American Cancer Society drive, only 4 per
cent agreed to do so. But when a comparable group of other residents were called
and asked to predict how they would react were they to receive such a request,
almost half predicted they would help.7

Other streams of evidence could be added: We more readily
believe flattering than self-deflating descriptions of ourselves. We misremember
our own past in self-enhancing ways. We guess that physically attractive people
have personalities more like our own than do unattractive people. To summarize
the argument: It's true that high self-esteem and positive thinking are adaptive
and desirable. But unless we close our eyes to a whole river of evidence, it
also seems true that the most common error in people's self-images is not an
unrealistically low self-esteem, but rather a self-serving bias; not an
inferiority complex, but a superiority complex. In any satisfactory theory or
theology of self-esteem, these two truths must somehow coexist.

Objections to the Self-serving Bias

Many will no doubt find this portrayal of the pervasiveness of
pride either depressing or somehow contrary to what they have experienced and
observed. Let me anticipate some of the objections. Ihear lots of people
putting themselves down, and I'm sometimes hampered by inferiority feelings
myself.

Let's see why this might be. First, not everyone has a
self-serving bias. Some people (women more often than men) do suffer from
unreasonably low self-esteem. For example, several recent studies have found
that while most people shuck responsibility for their failures on a laboratory
task or perceive themselves as having been more in control than they were,
depressed people are more accurate in their self
appraisal.8Sadder but wiser, they seem to be. There
is also evidence that while most people see themselves more favorably than other
people see them (thus providing yet another demonstration of the "normal"
self-serving bias), depressed people see themselves as other people see
them.9This prompts the unsettling thought that
Pascal may have been right: "I lay it down as a fact that, if all men knew what
others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world." Now that
truly is a depressing thought.

Second, those of us who exhibit the self-serving bias (and
that's most of us) may nevertheless feel inferior to certain specific
individuals, especially when we compare ourselves to someone who is a step or
two higher on the ladder of success, attractiveness or whatever. Thus we may
believe ourselves to be relatively superior yet feel discouraged - because we
fall short of certain others, or fail to fully reach our own goals.

Third, self-disparagement can be a self-serving tactic. As the
French sage La Rouchefoucauld detected, "Humility is often a... trick whereby
pride abases itself only to exalt itself later." For example, most of us have
learned that putting ourselves down is a useful technique for eliciting strokes
from others. We know that a remark such as "I wish I weren't so ugly" will
elicit at least a "Come now. I know people who are uglier than you." Researchers
have also observed that people will aggrandize their opponents and disparage or
even handicap themselves as a self-protective tactic. The coach who publicly
extols the upcoming opponent's awesome strength renders a loss understandable,
while a win becomes a praiseworthy achievement. Thus self-disparagement can be
subtly self-serving.

Perhaps all this "pride" is just an upbeat public display;
underneath it people may be suffering with miserable self
images.

Actually, when people must declare their feelings publicly, they
present a more modest self-portrayal than when allowed to respond anonymously.
Other evidence also points to the conclusion that most people really do see
themselves favorably and not just describe themselves that way to researchers.
Self-serving bias is exhibited by children before they learn to inhibit their
real feelings. And if, as many researchers believe, the self-serving bias is
rooted partly in how our minds process information - I more easily recall the
times I've bent over and picked up the laundry than the times I've overlooked it
- then it will be an actual self-perception, more a self-deception than a lie.
Consider finally the diversity of evidence that converges on the self-serving
bias. If it were merely a favorability bias in questionnaire ratings, we could
more readily explain the phenomenon away.

Is not the self-serving bias beneficial?

It likely is, for the same reasons that high self-esteem and
positive thinking are beneficial. Some have argued that the bias has survival
value - that cheaters, for example, will give a more convincing display of
honesty if they believe in their honesty. Belief in our superiority can also
motivate us to achieve and can sustain our sense of hope in difficult
times.

However, the self-serving bias is not always beneficial. For
example, in one series of experiments by Barry Schlenker at the University of
Florida, people who worked with other people on various tasks claimed
greater-than-average credit when their group did well and less-than-average
blame when it did not.10If most individuals in a
group believe they are underpaid and underappreciated, relative to their
better-than-average contributions, disharmony and envy will likely rear their
ugly heads. College presidents will readily recognize the phenomenon. If, as one
survey revealed, 94 per cent of college faculty think themselves better than
their average colleague, then when merit salary raises are announced and half
receive an average raise or less, many will feel an injustice has been done
them.

Does not the Bible portray us more positively, as reflecting
God's image?

The Bible offers a balanced picture of human nature. We are the
epitome of God's creation, made in his own image, and yet we are sinful too. Two
complementary truths. This chapter is affirming the sometimes understated second
truth. The experimental evidence that human reason is adaptable to self-interest
strikingly parallels the Christian contention that becoming aware of our sin is
like trying to see our own eyeballs. Self-serving, self-justifying biases
influence the way we perceive our actions, observes the social psychologist. "No
one can see his own errors," notes the psalmist (Ps 19:12 TEV). Thus the
Pharisee could thank God "that I am not like other men" (Lk 18:11
RSV).

The apostle Paul must have had such self-righteousness in mind
when he admonished the Philippians to "in humility count others better than
yourselves" (2:3 RSV). Paul assumed that our natural tendency is the opposite,
just as he assumed self-love when arguing that husbands should love their wives
as their own bodies. Jesus assumed self-love too when he commanded us to love
our neighbors as we love ourselves. The Bible does not teach self-love; it takes
it for granted.

In the biblical view pride alienates us from God and leads us to
disdain one another. It fuels conflict among individuals and nations, each of
which sees itself as more moral and deserving than others. The Nazi atrocities
were rooted not in self-conscious feelings of German inferiority but in Aryan
pride. The conflict between Britain and Argentina in 1982 involved a small
amount of real estate (the Falkland Islands) and a large amount of national
pride. If you and I pride ourselves on being in the top 20 per cent of drivers,
then we will likely pass off traffic safety campaigns as pertaining to those
idiotic other drivers.

For centuries pride has been considered the fundamental sin, the
deadliest of the seven deadly sins. If I seem confident about the potency of
pride, it is not because I have invented a new idea but because I am simply
assembling new data to reaffirm an old, old idea.

These researchers seem like killjoys. Where is there an
encouraging word?

Are not the greater killjoys those who would lead us to believe
that, because we're number one, we can accomplish anything? If we believe we can
do anything, it means that if we don't - if we are unhappily married, poor,
unemployed or have rebellious children - we have but ourselves to blame. Shame.
If only we had tried harder, been more disciplined, less stupid.

To know and accept ourselves, foibles and all, without
pretensions, is not gloomy but liberating. As William James noted, "To give up
one's pretensions is as blessed a relief as to get them gratified." Likewise,
the biblical understanding of self-affirmation does not downplay our pride and
sinfulness, as some would now have us do. Recall how Jesus' Sermon on the Mount
hints at the paradoxical ways by which comfort, satisfaction, mercy, peace,
happiness, and visions of God are discovered: "Happy are those who know they are
spiritually poor; the Kingdom of heaven belongs to them!" (Mt 5:3 TEV).

"Christian religion," said C. S. Lewis, "is, in the long run, a
thing of unspeakable comfort. But it does not begin in comfort; it begins in
[dismay], and it is no use at all trying to go on to that comfort without first
going through that dismay."11In coming to realize
that self-interest and illusion taint our thoughts and actions, we take the
first step toward wholeness. The new insights gained from psychological research
into vanity and illusion have profoundly Christian implications, for they drive
us back to the biblical view of our creatureliness and spiritual poverty, the
view which in our pride we are prone to deny.

Christians furthermore believe that God's grace is the key to
human liberation - liberation from the need to define our self-worth solely in
terms of achievements, prestige or physical and material well-being. Thus, while
I can never be worthy or wise enough, I can with Martin Luther "throw myself
upon God's grace." The recognition of our pride draws us to Christ and to a
positive self-esteem rooted in grace. This was St. Paul's experience: "I no
longer have a righteousness of my own, the kind that is gained by obeying the
Law. I now have the righteousness that is given through faith in Christ, the
righteousness that comes from God, and is based on faith" (Phil 3:9 TEV). The
Lord of the universe loves me, just as I am.

There is indeed tremendous relief in confessing our vanity, in
being known and accepted as we are. Having confessed the worst sin - playing God
- and having been forgiven, we gain release, the sense of being given what we
were struggling to get: security and acceptance. The feelings we can have in
this encounter with God are like those we enjoy in a relationship with someone
who, even after knowing our inmost thoughts, accepts us unconditionally. This is
the delicious experience we enjoy in a good marriage or an intimate friendship,
where we no longer feel the need to justify and explain ourselves or to be on
guard, where we are free to be spontaneous without fear of losing the other's
esteem. Such was the experience of the psalmist: "Lord, I have given up my pride
and turned away from my arrogance...I am content and at peace" (Ps 131:1-2 TEV).

What then is true humility?

First, we must recognize that the true end of humility is not
self-contempt, which leaves people still concerned with themselves. To
paraphrase C. S. Lewis, humility does not consist in handsome people trying to
believe they are ugly or clever people trying to believe they are fools. When
Muhammad Ali announced that he was the greatest, there was a sense in which his
pronouncement did not violate the spirit of humility. False modesty can actually
lead to an ironic pride in one's better-than-average humility. As a pastor of
one modest church remarked, "We are a humble people, and we're proud of it!"
(Perhaps some readers have by now similarly congratulated themselves on being
unusually free of the inflated self-perception this chapter
describes.)

True humility is more like self-forgetfulness than false
modesty. As my colleague Dennis Voskuil writes in his book Mountains into
Goldmines: Robert Schuller and the Gospel of Success, the refreshing gospel
promise is "not that we have been freed by Christ to love ourselves, but that we
have been set free from self-obsession. Not that the cross frees us for the ego
trip but that the cross frees us from the ego
trip."12 This leaves people free to esteem their
special talents and, with the same honesty, to esteem their neighbor's. Both the
neighbor's talents and our own are recognized as gifts and, like our height, are
not fit subjects for either inordinate pride or self-deprecation.

Obviously, true humility is a state not easily attained. "There
is," said C. S. Lewis, "no fault which we are more unconscious of in
ourselves.... If anyone would like to acquire humility, I can, I think, tell him
the first step. The first step is to realize that one is proud. And a biggish
step, too." The way to take this first step, continued Lewis, is to glimpse the
greatness of God and see oneself in light of this. "He and you are two things of
such a kind that if you really get into any kind of touch with Him you will, in
fact, be humble, feeling the infinite relief of having for once got rid of [the
pretensions which have] made you restless and unhappy all your
life."13

4

Reasons for
Unreason

What a piece of work is man! how noble in reason! how
infinite in faculty!... in apprehension how like a god! William Shakespeare, "Hamlet"

We are the hollow menWe are the stuffed menLeaning
togetherHeadpiece filled with straw.

T. S. Eliot, "The Hollow Men"

COLLEGE STUDENTS listening
to a lecture are told they are about to be fooled: a performer will use clever
tricks to make them believe he can read their minds. A gentleman steps to the
front of the room and, true to the prediction, deftly performs his sleight of
mind, startling his audience volunteers with eerie revelations about their own
thoughts. When the demonstration is over, the lecture hall buzzes with the
remarks of excited students who believe they have witnessed a true
clairvoyant.1

How could they have been so gullible? They had been told
outright that the man had no special powers. Why, for that matter, are
paranormal phenomena so attractive to credulous minds? Today's pied pipers need
only pipe and people will follow as readily as ever. Devotees of Edgar Cayce and
Jeane Dixon and believers in dream telepathy, out-of-body experiences,
psychokinesis, astrology, demonology, levitation, reincarnation, horoscopes and
ghosts are all enthralled by mysterious phenomena that seem to defy scientific
explanation.

While skepticism about extraordinary claims will some times
prevent one from recognizing truth, the converse is also true. A completely open
mind is vulnerable to having garbage thrown in. New research in psychology shows
how the mind collects garbage. As chapter three hinted, a basic fact about human
nature is our capacity for illusion and self- deception. Contrary to Hamlet's
paean of praise, we are not always "noble in reason" and certainly not "infinite
in faculty."

How do we form and sustain false beliefs about ourselves and
others? And how do these illusory thinking processes lead people to believe in
paranormal phenomena? This chapter and the next will suggest some
answers.

Illusory Thinking

Our preconceptions control our interpretations and
memories. Recent experiments indicate that one of the most significant
facts about our minds is the extent to which our preconceived notions bias the
way we view, interpret and remember the information that comes to us. Sometimes
our minds block from our awareness something that is there, if only we were
predisposed to perceive it. While reading these words you have probably been
unaware, until this moment, that you are looking at your nose.

Our prejudgments can also induce us to see what we already
believe. Three recent psychological experiments demonstrate the incredible
biasing power of our beliefs. One, by Charles Lord and his Stanford University
colleagues, helps explain why pondering ambiguous evidence often fuels rather
than extinguishes the fires of debate among people who hold strongly opposing
opinions.2They showed college students, half of
whom favored and half of whom opposed capital punishment, two purported new
research studies. One study confirmed and the other disconfirmed the students'
existing beliefs about the crime-deterring effectiveness of the death penalty.
Both the proponents and opponents of capital punishment readily accepted the
evidence which confirmed their belief but were sharply critical of the
disconfirming evidence. Showing the two sides an identical body of mixed
evidence had therefore not narrowed their disagreement but increased it. Each
side had perceived the evidence as supporting its belief and now believed even
more strongly. Is this what happens when liberals and conservatives scrutinize
the biblical evidence regarding sensitive issues such as men's and women's
roles?

Researchers Craig Anderson and Lee Ross experimented with the
biasing power of beliefs by planting false beliefs in people's minds and then
trying to discredit those beliefs.3They invited
their Stanford University student subjects to consider whether people who tend
to take risks make good firefighters. Each participant in the experiment
considered two cases. Some were shown a risk-taker as a successful fire fighter
and a cautious person as an unsuccessful one; others were shown cases suggesting
the opposite. After forming their theory that risk-takers make better or worse
firefighters, the subjects were asked to explain how they reached their
conclusions. Those who were led to believe in the superiority of risk-takers
typically reasoned that a willingness to risk is conducive to bravery in saving
occupants from a burning building. Those who theorized the superiority of
cautious people often explained that successful fire fighters are careful rather
than impulsive and thus less likely to risk their own and others'
lives.

Once formed, each rationale could exist independent of the
initial information. Thus when the subjects were informed that the cases were
merely manufactured for the experiment, their new beliefs nevertheless survived
mostly intact. The students retained their explanations and therefore continued
to believe that risk-prone people really do make better or worse firefighters
than do cautious people.

Experiments such as this have gone on to indicate that,
paradoxically, the more closely we examine our theories and understand and
explain how they might be true, the more closed we become to any information
that shows otherwise. It makes one wonder: What are the consequences of creating
a scientific theory, or a religious (or antireligious) doctrine, and then
explaining and defending it? Do false theories and doctrines, once defended,
become difficult to refute?

We sustain erroneous beliefs, too, by our tendency to recreate
memories according to our present impressions. The extent to which our current
beliefs control our attempts to remember the past is evident in studies of
conflicting eyewitness testimonies. University of Washington psychologists
Elizabeth Loftus and John Palmer showed people a film of a traffic accident and
then asked them questions about what they had seen.4People who were asked "How fast were the cars going when they smashed into
each other?" gave higher estimates than those asked "How fast were the cars
going when they hit each other?" A week later they were asked whether they
recalled seeing any broken glass. Although there was no broken glass in the
accident, subjects who were asked the question with "smashed" were more than
twice as likely to report broken glass as those asked the question with
"hit."

Our preconceptions can similarly affect how we interpret and
recall information from the Bible. Our prior beliefs often influence the
questions we bring to the Bible and the answers we get from it. Do we want to
know the biblical view of military spending? Those on both sides find the Bible
supporting their position. It. seems as if people are reasoning:

Military strength is right (wrong).

The Bible teaches what is right.

Therefore the Bible advocates (does not teach) military
strength.

Although the biblical interpretation is not really so arbitrary
as this example might suggest, never is our thinking free from the control of
our assumptions. Our basic belief system is important, for it shapes our
understanding of everything else.

We overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs. The
intellectual conceit evident in our judgments of past knowledge (the
I-knew-it-all-along phenomenon described in chapter three) extends to estimates
of our current knowledge. For example, Amos Tversky at Stanford University and
Daniel Kahneman at the University of British Columbia asked their subjects to
estimate how many foreign cars were imported into the United States in
1968.5 The subjects were instructed to respond with
a range of figures broad enough to make it 98 per cent certain that the true
figure would be included. But nearly half the time the true answer was outside
the range in which they were 98 per cent confident.

This overconfidence phenomenon has become an accepted fact among
researchers. If people's answers to a question are only 60 per cent correct,
they will typically feel 75 per cent sure. Even if people feel 100 per cent
sure, they still err about 15 per cent of the time. What produces this
over-confidence?

Experiments such as one conducted by P. C. Wason indicate that
one reason we're so sure is our reluctance to seek information that might
disconfirm what we believe.6Wason gave British
university students a three-number sequence, such as 2-4-6, and asked them to
guess the rule he had used to devise the series. (The rule was simple: any three
ascending numbers.) Before they submitted their answers, the subjects were
allowed to generate their own sets of three numbers, and each time Wason would
tell them whether or not their set conformed tohis rule. Once they were
certain they had the rule, they were to announce it.

The result? Seldom right but never in doubt! Twenty-three out of
twenty-nine people convinced themselves of a wrong rule. They had formed an
erroneous theory about the rule and then searched only for confirming evidence
rather than attempting to disconfirm their intuitive hunches. Other experiments
confirm that people eagerly try to verify their beliefs but are not inclined to
seek evidence which might disprove their beliefs. Here again we tend to maintain
false beliefs.

Anecdotes and testimonies are more persuasive than factual
data. Many recent experiments have found that people's minds are swayed
more by vivid examples than by reliable but abstract statistical information.
For example, one recent University of Michigan study found that a single vivid
welfare case had more impact on opinions about welfare recipients than did
factual information running contrary to the particular case. When Ronald Reagan
told audiences about the young man who used food stamps to buy an orange and
then used the change to buy vodka, he exploited the power of a vivid and
memorable anecdote.

Entrepreneurs exploit people's eagerness to infer general truth
from a striking instance. For example, U.S. state lotteries (which typically
return less than half of the billions they take in) exploit the impact of a few
vivid winners. Since the statistical truth always stays buried in the back of
people's minds, the system seduces them into perceiving a lottery ticket as
having much greater earnings potential than it actually does.

We are often swayed by illusions of causation, correlation
and personal control. The one foible of human thinking known by nearly
every student of psychology is the nearly irresistible temptation to assume that
when two events occur together, one has caused the other. For example, since
there is a relationship between people's educational attainments and their
earnings, between certain child-rearing styles and the personalities of children
exposed to them, and between health practices and longevity, we too readily jump
to the conclusions that education pays financial dividends, that specific
parenting styles have observable effects and that changes in nutrition and
exercise habits can extend life expectancy.

Sometimes a merely accidental association between two events can
create a false belief that one is causing the other. Superstitious behaviors are
often produced by the power of coincidence. If an act just happens to be
performed before a rewarding event occurs, it is easy to get the idea that the
act must have caused the reward. Of course, only occasionally will a reward
indeed follow the behavior. But this erratic, "intermittent reinforcement," as
experimental psychologists call it, is especially conducive to persistence. If a
hungry pigeon is every so often given a food pellet regardless of what it is
doing, the pigeon will often develop some ritualistic behavior and, even after
the pellets have been discontinued, perform that act 10,000 times or more before
quitting.7

Our correlation-causation confusion is compounded by our
susceptibility to perceiving a correlation where none exists. Observing random
events, people easily become convinced that significant relationships are
occurring - when they expect to see significant relationships. As part of their
research with the Bell Telephone Laboratories, William Ward and Herbert Jenkins
showed people the results of a hypothetical fifty-day cloud-seeding
experiment.8They told their subjects which of the
fifty days the clouds had been seeded and which of the days it had rained. This
information was nothing more than a random mix of results; some times it rained
after seeding, sometimes it didn't. People nevertheless were convinced - in
conformity with their intuitive supposition about the effects of cloud seeding -
that they really had observed a relationship between cloud seeding and rain.
This experiment and others like it indicate that we easily misperceive random
data as confirming our beliefs. With incredible ease we make sense out of
nonsense.

Our tendency to perceive random events as though they were
meaningfully related feeds the frequent illusion that chance events are subject
to our personal control. Ellen Langer has demonstrated this with creative
experiments on gambling behavior.9People were
easily seduced into believing they could beat chance. If they chose a lottery
number for themselves, they demanded four times as much money for the sale of
their lottery ticket as did people whose number was assigned by the
experimenter. If they played a game of chance against an awkward and nervous
person, they were willing to bet significantly more than when playing against a
dapper, confident opponent. In these and other ways Langer consistently observed
that people act as if chance events were subject to their personal
control.

A phenomenon called "regression toward the average" often helps
create illusions of control. For example, students who score extremely high or
low on a test are more likely, when retested, to fall back ("regress") toward
the middle than to become even more extreme. When you're at the bottom the only
way to go is up. Likewise, parents who are extremely high or low in intelligence
or religiousness or political activism should expect most of their children to
be less exceptional on that dimension (to "regress" toward
normality).

Sometimes we recognize that events seldom continue at an
extreme. Experience has taught us that when everything is going great, something
will soon go wrong, and that when life is dealing us terrible blows we can
usually look forward to things getting better. Often, though, we fail to
recognize this regression effect. When things are exceptionally bad, whatever we
try - going to a psychotherapist, starting a new diet exercise plan, reading a
self-help book - is more likely to be followed by improvement than by worsening.
Thus it seems effective - even if it had no effect.

Consulting psychologists are often called when employee morale
is in the pits or the sales curve is at its lowest ebb. After the consultant's
suggestions are implemented, morale and sales improve, and everyone celebrates
the consultant's keen insights. Similarly, a football coach who rewards his team
with lavish praise and a light practice after their best game of the season and
harasses them after an exceptionally bad game, may soon conclude that rewards
produce poorer performance in the next game while punishments improve
performance. Parents and teachers may reach the same conclusion after reacting
to extremely good or bad behaviors. It seems, suggest Tversky and Kahneman, that
nature operates in such a way that we often feel punished for rewarding others
and rewarded for punishing them.10

Our erroneous beliefs may generate their own reality.
There is yet another reason why false beliefs, once formed, are so
resistant to correction. People's beliefs may lead them to act in ways that
elicit an apparent confirmation of those beliefs.

At the University of Minnesota, Mark Snyder has conducted
several experiments that demonstrate this self-fulfilling phenomenon. In one of
these studies, conducted with Elizabeth Tanke and Ellen Berscheid, men students
had a phone conversation with women they mistakenly thought (from having been
shown a picture) were either exceptionally attractive or
unattractive.11The women were unaware of the
experiment. Analysis of just the women's comments during the conversations
showed that those women who were presumed to be attractive were in fact more
warm and likable on the telephone than the women who were presumed unattractive.
The men's erroneous beliefs had led the women to act in ways that made the
stereo-typical belief - that beautiful people are desirable people - a
reality.

We are misled by a number of other foibles of human thinking.
Many other research findings testify to the magnitude of human folly. We often
do not know why we act a certain way. We make false assertions about what we
have done, why we did it and what we will do in the future. We underestimate the
impact of social situations on others' behavior. We are too quick to assume that
people's actions mirror their inner dispositions and attitudes. We are convinced
by repeated assertions, even if we know them to be of dubious credibility. We
overestimate the brilliance and competence of people who by happenstance are in
positions of social power, even if we know they were assigned to that position
arbitrarily.

Since we know that these errors creep into even sophisticated
scientific thinking, it seems safe to conclude that none of us is exempt from
them. Human nature has apparently not changed since the psalmist observed three
thousand years ago that ''no one can see his own errors."

Let me hasten to balance the picture lest you succumb to the
cynical conclusion that all beliefs are absurd. Disciplined training of the mind
- the chief aim of education - can help restrain our unbridled imagination.
Indeed, it is a tribute to human wisdom that we can so elegantly analyze the
imperfections of human wisdom. Were I to argue that all human thought is
illusory, my assertion would be self-refuting, for it too would be but an
illusion. It would be logically equivalent to contending that all
generalizations are false, including this one. Besides, many of these errors in
human intuition spring from thinking mechanisms that are generally useful. If,
for example, things are sometimes subject to our control and sometimes not, we
will maximize our actual control by assuming that we are in control, even if
this assumption sometimes creates a superstitious illusion of
control.

A Call to Humility

The seductive power of illusory thinking is enormous. It
penetrates all realms of human thought, warping our perceptions of reality and
prejudicing our judgments of people.

The implications of this are enormous. For theologians, it
questions the assumption of human rationality that undergirds the "I choose God"
theology of modern fundamentalism - the assumption that, since our reasoning is
sound, we are capable of making a rational decision for Christ. By contrast, the
Reformed theology of Martin Luther and John Calvin assumes that human reason is
fallen and incapable of dispassionately weighing the evidence and deciding for
Christ. Thus "God chooses me" and, through the Spirit, enables my
response.

For psychologists, research on illusory thinking suggests a new
humility regarding the truth of our unchecked speculation. Since we can conceive
and defend almost any theory, we must check our theories against the data of
God's creation. To appreciate the unreliability of armchair speculation is to
admit that we need careful, scientific study of human thought and
behavior.

For each of us, personally, research on human error helps us
understand Jesus' admonition to "judge not." We can easily wrong people by our
overconfident conclusions - say, that Billy's school problems stem from his
permissive parents or that the quiet woman in the room next door is hostile. Nor
do we need to feel intimidated by other people's certainty. The belief we can
hold with greatest certainty is the humbling conviction that some of our beliefs
contain error. We are, after all, not gods but finite men and women. Each of us
peers at reality through a glass, darkly.

If all this research reinforces Paul's declaration that human
wisdom is not nearly so wise as God's foolishness, well, that's OK. Faith and
trust require humility. Not only is it all right to have doubts, but it is
intellectual pride, even self-deification, not to grant the likelihood of error
within our beliefs. Indeed, faith runs deeper than belief. Belief is founded on
reason; faith is a gift of God. Even in times of deepest doubt, faith compels
hope and gives the courage to risk. As P. J. Bailey wrote in "A Country
Town,"

Who never doubted never half believed;

Where doubt, there truth is, - 'tis her shadow.

5

Should We Believe in the
Paranormal?

FOR MILLIONS OF AMERICANS, the
evidence for extrasensory perception (ESP) is compelling: Jeane Dixon's gift of
prophecy enabled her to foresee President Kennedy's assassination. Police
psychics Dorothy Allison and Peter Hurkos solve cases that dumbfound detectives.
Ordinary people have spontaneous dreams of dreaded events - only to discover
that their dreams are reality. In widely publicized laboratory experiments,
parapsychologists (psychologists who study "paranormal" happenings) have been
astonished at gifted psychics who against all odds can discern the contents of
sealed envelopes, influence the roll of a die or draw a picture of what someone
else is viewing at an unknown remote location.

Why then are research psychologists overwhelmingly skeptical of
all such claims? Is it simple closed-mindedness, bred by a mechanistic world
view that has no room for supernatural mysteries? And how should Christians view
such claims? Should we welcome them as evidence for the supernatural? Fear them
as evidence of the demonic? What implications do such claims have for our
understanding of ourselves and others?

When confronted with extraordinary claims, we are vulnerable to
two errors. We maybe either too open or too closed to the evidence. Being
totally skeptical may sometimes lead us to reject the truth. The disciple Thomas
found belief in Jesus' resurrection impossible until "I see in his hands the
print of the nails,... and place my hand in his side" (Jn 20:25 RSV). During the
eighteenth century scientists scoffed at the notion that meteorites had
extraterrestrial origins. And twenty years ago how many of us would have
believed claims for cosmic black holes and mysterious subatomic
particles?

On the other hand, as we saw in chapter four, naivete' can make
us gullible to all sorts of falsehoods. In times past people were convinced that
bloodletting was therapeutic, that their personality could be predicted from the
bumps on their head, and that fairies really existed. Obviously there must be
reasonable efforts to validate paranormal claims. An open but critical stance is
best for sifting truth from fantasy.

The Paranormal: Grounds for
Skepticism

Being skeptical of paranormal events does not necessarily mean
doubting the existence of a supernatural world. Paranormal means that which is
outside the range of ordinary experience and is not scientifically explainable.
Supernatural refers to that which is outside the physical world.
The supernatural might, therefore, break into the natural world in paranormal,
ways. (It might also break through in normal ways.) But paranormal events as a
group do not necessarily tell us anything about the supernatural world -
including whether or not it exists. How should Christians, then, view the
paranormal?

We can no more disprove the possibility of paranormal phenomena
than we can disprove the existence of Santa Claus. But what if we could discover
no reliable evidence for Santa Claus, and what if there were good reasons for
thinking his existence unlikely? Would we not, pending new and convincing
evidence, withhold belief? In the case of ESP (extrasensory perception), the
most respectable of the paranormal claims, there are at least a half-dozen
grounds for withholding belief.

1. Parapsychology's defenders and critics agree: There has
never been a reproducible psychic experiment, nor any individual who can
consistently exhibit psychic ability. British psychologist C. E. M. Hansel
typifies the skepticism of most research psychologists: "After a hundred years
of research, not a single individual has been found who can demonstrate ESP to
the satisfaction of independent investigators."1Even John Beloff, past president of the Parapsychological Association,
seems to agree. "No experiment showing the clear existence of the paranormal has
been consistently repeated by other investigators in other
laboratories."2

At the 1981American Psychological Association convention
one symposium examined the case for and another the case against ESP.
Ironically, nearly the same words were spoken at each. Parapsychologists said
that what their field needs to give it credibility is one reproducible
phenomenon and a theory to explain it. The critics agreed. parapsychology is the
only discipline that (1)lacks a phenomenon and (2)lacks a theory
that would lead us to expect any such phenomenon. Moreover, the critics stand
ready, as they have for years, to confirm the abilities of any true psychic or
to reproduce one bias-free ESP phenomenon. But parapsychologists have not been
interested in sending their ESP all-star team to a psychic showdown. Sensitive
psychics cannot perform under such pressure, they say; ESP is too elusive, too
easily disrupted by the presence of skeptics.

2.Spontaneous psychic experiences also fail to pass
scrutiny. Perhaps ESP is indeed not the sort of phenomenon that one repeats
on demand in an experiment. Maybe it's more like the eruption of Mount St.
Helens - a real and observable phenomenon, but one that occurs unbidden. If so,
would-be psychics could go to the Las Vegas and Atlantic City craps tables,
which skim off but 1.4 per cent of the money bet. Their motive could be
charitable - say, to divert money from the gambling industry into the hands of
hungry people. And they don't have to bet on demand. They could just stand there
and wait for spontaneous premonitions to erupt. A psychic need only beat chance
by 3 per cent to clear the same profit as the house usually does. But the
casinos continue to operate, showing, as always, the expected return.

Or consider the predictions of would-be seers. Not only did
Jeane Dixon never predict anything so precise as "John Kennedy will be elected
and then assassinated," but she changed her mind before his election, saying
that Richard Nixon would be elected in 1960. More recently she predicted that
Pope Paul would enjoy a year of good health (he died), that the Panama Canal
treaties would be defeated in Congress (they were approved), that Marie Osmond
would not marry (two months later she did), and that Ted Kennedy would be
elected President in 1980(he wasn't). No celebrated psychic has been
shown to have a better-than-guessing batting average. Yet the money continues to
roll in from those who love to believe.

Do the spontaneous premonitions of ordinary people fare better?
How about our dreams? Do they foretell the future, or do they only seem to
because we are more likely to remember or reconstruct dreams that seem to come
true? A half century ago, when the Lindbergh baby was kidnaped and murdered but
before the body was discovered, two Harvard psychologists invited the public to
send in their dream reports concerning the whereabouts of the
child.3Of the 1,300 dream reports received, all
spontaneously experienced by people who felt they might have significance, how
many accurately perceived the child as dead? Five per cent.

3. Among professional psychics is a long history of
fraud. For years, stage performers of ESP have been convincing audiences of
their wondrous powers. The most notorious of these have been debunked, often by
magicians who do not take kindly to those who exploit their magical art and
distort people's understanding of reality. Magician James Randi, for example,
has duplicated the feats of stage psychics and offered $10,000 to anyone who can
demonstrate psychic powers before a group of informed experts like
himself.

Is there in all the world anyone who can read others' minds,
move remote objects or perform any of the feats described at the beginning of
this chapter? Randi's offer has been well publicized for nearly twenty years. On
occasion he has even surrendered his cashier's check to an impartial jury which
had to judge whether the psychic feat was actually performed as claimed under
the agreed-upon conditions. As of this writing, fifty-seven have submitted to a
test. All have failed.

Honest parapsychology researchers have at times been deceived by
subjects, such as spoon-bender Uri Geller, who were later discovered to be using
trickery. To demonstrate the vulnerability of scientists untrained in magic, two
teenage magicians in 1979approached Washington University's newly funded
parapsychology laboratory. Over the next three years the two defied the laws of
nature by projecting mental images onto film, effortlessly bending keys and
spoons, causing clocks to slide across a table, affecting objects in sealed jars
and performing other such marvelous feats. Although the researcher who directs
the laboratory had been cautioned against trickery and reminded of the need to
have magicians present, he ignored the warnings and proclaimed that "these two
kids are the most reliable of the people that we've
studied."4Having demonstrated the need for tighter
safeguards in parapsychological research, the two in 1983appeared at a
news conference to reveal their psychic sham. Their many psychic feats had been
nothing more than magic stunts.

4.The fact that most people believe in ESP, and even
believe that they have personally experienced it, is now understandable.
Some people wonder: If ESP does not exist, then why in one recent national
poll did 64 per cent of college graduates say they believe in it? And why, in
another national survey, did 58 per cent of Americans claim to have "personally
experienced" ESP?

In chapter four we described the explosion in our knowledge of
how people form false beliefs. We noted the evidence that people's minds are as
much swayed by vivid anecdotes as by dry facts. This vulnerability to the
dramatic helps explain why even forewarned college students may misinterpret a
magician's tricks as genuine ESP.5

Moreover, people fail to recognize chance events for what they
are. Ordinary events seem extraordinary. Given the billions of events occurring
in the world each day, some incredible coincidences are bound to happen. Here is
my favorite: The King James Bible was completed when William Shakespeare was
forty-six years old. In Psalm 46, the forty-sixth word is "shake," and the
forty-sixth word from the end (ignoring Selah, a symbol) is "spear." (Perhaps it
is even more incredible that someone discovered this!) When "police psychics"
fire hundreds of predictions, their verbal shot guns are bound to score a few
"amazing" (coincidental) hits, which the media are only too happy to report.
However, the unglamorous fact is that researchers have found that police
psychics do no better than could you or I, given the same information about a
case. After the Atlanta police department had scrutinized the psychic visions of
Dorothy Allison and more than five hundred others in their search for the child
killer, it remained for dogged police work to solve the case.

Other times, what seems like ESP is neither that nor a sheer
coincidence. Driving down the highway a husband remarks to his wife, "I wonder
what ever happened to Steve Thompson?" Astonished, his wife replies, "I was just
about to say the same thing!" Both are unaware of what stimulated their common
memory of Steve, perhaps a voice like his on the radio moments before or an
image from a passing billboard. Given how difficult it is for people to assess
the mysterious workings of their minds, they naturally attribute such shared
thoughts to mental telepathy.

As we saw in chapter four, one of the most startling facts about
the human mind is the extent to which preconceived notions bias the way
information is interpreted and remembered. Our prejudgments can, for example,
induce us to see and recall what we already believe. Many psychic predictions
are vague enough to allow a variety of later interpretations. Most people will
later, once they know the facts, tend to recall and interpret the prediction as
fulfilled, matching the precise occurrence with the one way the general
prediction could fit. Even when shown purely random events, people in
experiments easily become convinced that significant relationships are occurring
- if they expect to see them. Conversely, premonitions that clearly fail are
usually forgotten. The 95 per cent whose dreams incorrectly anticipated the fate
of the kidnaped Lindbergh baby surely forgot their dreams sooner than did the 5
per cent whose premonitions were accurate.

Researchers have used these deficiencies in human intuition to
manufacture false beliefs in ESP. Fred Ayeroff and Robert Abelson asked 100 Yale
students to try to transmit mentally one of five possible symbols to another
student, who would guess what was being transmitted.6When the students were further drawn into the drama of experiment by
choosing their own symbols and being given a warm-up period, more than 50 per
cent of the time they felt confident that they were experiencing ESP. But their
actual ESP success rate was just about what chance would give: 20 per
cent.

These mental processes are some of the ingredients in human
nature's recipe for convincing us of phenomena that may not exist. Indeed, these
illusory thinking tendencies are so powerful that whether psychic powers exist
or not, it seems almost inevitable that humanity would convince itself of
them.

5. The accumulating evidence that the mind is dependent on
the brain works against the presumption that mind can function (or travel)
separate from brain. Some Christian writers have touted ESP as proof of a
nonmaterial essence in human nature, but books and articles along this line
often show an unawareness of both the scientific status of ESP and of the
emerging biblical and scientific consensus that human nature is a bonded
mind-body unity. Investigations of the correspondence between our brain states
and our emotions, thoughts and actions indicate that the mind is linked to the
body as closely as is a telephone message to the electrical events in the phone
line. This modern view parallels the ancient wholistic view of the Hebrew
people, expressed in the radical Christian hope of a resurrected mind-body unit.
In both views, the idea that human minds could travel and communicate
independent of human bodies has become as questionable as the idea that
telephone messages could travel independent of the phone equipment.

6. The Bible counsels us to be skeptical of those who claim
godlike abilities. We humans have always had a hard time accepting our
finiteness. In the creation story, humanity's fall occurred when man and woman
denied their human limitations. Today occultists and other believers in ESP are
again proclaiming the human potential to mimic God: to be omniscient - reading
others' minds and knowing the future; to be omnipresent - traveling out of body
and viewing events in remote locations; to be omnipotent - moving or even
destroying objects with the mind's hidden powers. Science, in questioning such
self-deifying claims, sides with biblical faith, which proclaims that our hope
lies not in ourselves, our mental powers or the immortality of our disembodied
minds, but in a Being who created and accepts our limits and who promises to
resurrect us. Not surprisingly, surveys reveal that people who have given up
believing in such a Being are more likely to find paranormal claims credible. As
George Tyrell declared, "If [people's] craving for the mysterious, the
wonderful, the supernatural, be not fed on true religion it will feed itself on
the garbage of any superstition that is offered to it." When people no longer
wrestle with the real mysteries of religious faith, they become susceptible to
the unsubstantiated mysteries of pseudoscience.

For all these reasons, open skepticism seems the informed
response to the modern avalanche of psychic claims. Most scientists and
magicians keep themselves open to belief should any demonstrable phenomenon be
discovered. Christians, too, must keep their eyes and ears open to the full
potential of God's creation. Are proponents of ESP equally willing to say what
would cause them to question their belief? What would it take? How many failed
attempts to demonstrate a reproducible psychic phenomenon? How many years of
casinos getting their expected returns? How many psychic hoaxes? How many
failures to pass Randi's $10,000 challenge? How much evidence concerning the
dependence of mind on brain? How much biblical revelation about our human
limits?

The Supernatural: Can a Skeptic Believe?

I have often been asked, How can you question these paranormal
claims and then turn right around and believe other equally paranormal
(beyond-the-normal, unexplainable) claims? After all, aren't the existence of
God, the resurrection of Jesus, and life after death also paranormal claims?
Consider three replies.

First, the question is no different from asking, How can one
disbelieve in Santa Claus, yet believe in Jesus? All of us believe some things
while disbelieving others. Belief in some claims that are not scientifically
confirmed does not require believing all unproven claims. Faith in Christ is not
blind credulity.7

Second, not all truth is scientific. The beauty of a Mozart
piano concerto or the love of a father for his son are not easily measured by
the tools of science. Nonetheless, they are real. History, philosophy and
theology are disciplines which also offer insight into truth. Yet they are not
scientific. If evidence from such sources can be amassed to substantiate certain
untestable religious claims, doubting the claims may be the more difficult
position to defend.

Third, a clear difference lies between the easily testable
claims of ESP and the not-scientifically-testable claims that God exists. Take,
for example, those who claim to see colored auras surrounding people's bodies.
Magician Randi proposes a simple test of this claim. His typical conversation
with such psychics goes something like this:

Randi: Do you see an aura around my head?

Psychic: Sure!

Randi: Can you still see the aura if I put this magazine in
front of my face?

Psychic: Of course.

Randi: Then if I were to step behind a wall barely taller than I
am, you could determine my location from the aura visible above my head,
right?

Randi reports that no aura-seer has yet agreed to take this
simple test. Just because most Christian beliefs are not similarly refutable
does not prove that they are true. It simply means that they are a different
type of claim. It is true, however, that (1)they have not been refuted,
(2)they are essentially congenial with what we know from extrabiblical
sources about human nature, and (3)they are defensibly worthy of our
commitment.

Fourth, the Bible warns us against being misled by
self-professed psychics. The Mosaic law was definite: "Don't let your people
practice divination or look for omens or use spells or charms, and don't let
them consult the spirits of the dead" (Deut 18:10-11TEV). In Isaiah the
Lord scoffs at the Babylonians' pagan beliefs: "Keep all your magic spells and
charms.... You are powerless in spite of the advice you get. Let your
astrologers come forward and save you.... They will be like bits of straw" (Is
47:12-14 TEV).

True, the Bible does offer its own paranormal claims - Joseph's
predictive dreams, Elisha's dividing the Jordan River with his cloak, Jesus'
miracles. But the action is attributed to divine power, not human skill or even
human manipulation of divine power. The will and the act are God's. As for
biblical prophecy, much of it was less a prediction of the future than an
inspired understanding of where the present course was leading. A modern Amos
might not name the date of the world's next war, but he would discern that if
the nations of the world do not turn from their wicked ways a war without
winners is likely. While much Old Testament prophecy was clearly predictive of
the future, Moses counseled a scientific attitude toward predictions: "If a
prophet speaks in the name of the LORD and what he says does not come true, then
it is not the LORD's message" (Deut 18:22 TEV).

This is the same spirit that Carl Sagan echoes today: "Skeptical
scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep insights can
be winnowed from deep nonsense." Skepticism protects us from those who would
exploit us. Jim Jones seduced people into his cult partly by using psychic
fakery to convince them of his extraordinary gifts.8Pseudoscience and the occult always threaten genuine science and
religion by distracting people from pursuing truth and godly living.

Skepticism can be carried to an extreme or degenerate into a
cold, closed-minded cynicism. Henrik Ibsen's play The Wild Duck
portrays the potentially harmful effects of destroying people's comforting
illusions without replacing them with something better. But skepticism can also
be a healthy part of the search for truth. Those who would "worship God with
their minds" search for truth, believing that it is better to hope for things
genuine than things unreal, better to base our lives on the rock of reality than
the sands of illusion. Proper skepticism acknowledges mystery. Clearing the
decks of pseudomysteries can free us to ponder the genuine mysteries of faith
and life.

Christians should welcome all evidence for the existence of a
supernatural world. Unfortunately fakes and well-intentioned but mistaken people
have sometimes smeared all who believe in the supernatural. The attempts at
proof (including those of many Christians) have often been either uninformed or
tended to aggrandize the performer rather than bring us into the presence of the
Holy One. Such people tend to believe that we can force the hand of psychic
forces or divine power by rituals, powers of concentration or prayers prayed in
utter belief (that is, human effort to have faith). But a Christian view is that
God's power is for him alone to control. We cannot manipulate him. It is our
role to seek to live obediently in his will.

On this much the believers and skeptics of the paranormal agree:
at issue is not just whether ESP exists but our whole understanding of human
nature. It is the basic question raised in this part of this book: How are we to
believe what we believe, especially about ourselves and others? Do we possess
divine, supernatural attributes? Or are we finite creatures of the One who
declares, "I am God, and there is none like me"? Judaism and Christianity have
historically maintained that we do not inherently possess extraordinary
supernatural powers. We are the creatures of the one great supernatural being,
the Creator God who occasionally gives special gifts to individuals for the good
of the body. An inflated self-image tempts us to deny our limits and see
ourselves as beings who possess God's supernatural powers.

So, no, Virginia, there is no Santa Claus, and no, human beings
appear not to have divine powers. But don't worry. It's okay. We can have
dignity without having deity. The One who is deity has redeemed us and is
restoring us to creaturely dignity.

Part IIInfluencing

"YOU ARE THE
SALT of the earth, ... the light of the world." "Go
therefore and make disciples of all nations." "Do not be conformed to this
world." "Obey God rather than men"(Mt 5:13-14; 28:19; Rom 12:2; Acts 5:29
RSV). To be in the world but not of it: that is God's call. To influence the
world but not be tainted by it. Social influence - how we shape and are shaped
by our social worlds - is the focus of Part II. Sometimes our communication has
a disappointing impact. Chapter six asks, What factors make for memorable,
persuasive communication? How may those who teach, speak or write do so with
greatest influence? And what can all of us do to get the most from what we hear
and read? We will examine principles of effective communication and consider how
they may be applied within the Christian community.

While chapter six deals with the form of our messages, chapter
seven concerns their content. To shape attitudes and behavior we frequently rely
on rewards. In fact, the Christian message itself is often presented in terms of
what faith will do for us. While rewards can be effective in changing behavior,
they may have hidden costs. The frequent appeal to personal need and the ready
use of rewards in our proclamation of the gospel may not only foster
self-centered religion but in the long run undermine the message's
credibility.

Chapter eight moves on to how the world can influence us. While
we want to be shaped by God, others may influence our thoughts and actions more
than we are willing to admit. In some cases, social pressure leads us to yield
against our better judgment; with Peter we may say by our actions that we "do
not know the man" (Mt 26:69-75 RSV). In other cases conformity extends beyond
our actions to the core of our beliefs and values. Greater independence is not
the solution to conformity. This chapter proposes a solution both biblically and
sociologically sound.

Within God's community there are problems, too. In chapter nine
we will see how the desire to maintain harmony can become so strong that it
results in a loss of critical judgment. Fear of conflict can lead to
"groupthink." When groupthink hits the church, doctrine and practice are not
critically examined, and we grow neither in our understanding of God's Word nor
in its application to the problems of contemporary living. Here we try to
answer, What causes groupthink in the church, and how can it be
cured?

6

Is Anyone Getting the
Message?

A YOUNG COUPLE, Martha and
Leon, happily file out from Sunday worship at Faith Church, congratulating the
pastor for his fine message on Christian love. Later that week when her friend
Sally, who was ill on Sunday, asks her about the sermon, Martha can recall
little of its content. Perhaps, Sally surmises, she is just upset and distracted
by how unloving Leon has been lately.

Is this typical or atypical of the impact of sermons? Those of
us who teach or preach become so easily enamored by our spoken words that we are
tempted to overestimate their power. Ask college students what aspect of their
college experience has been most valuable, or what they remember from their
freshman year, and few will recall the brilliant lectures which their faculty
gave.

Would the same be true of people reflecting on their church
experience? A recent award-winning study by University of California
psychologist Thomas Crawford indicates that sermons sometimes have surprisingly
little impact.1Crawford and his associates went to
the homes of people from twelve churches shortly before and after they heard
sermons opposing racial bigotry and injustice. When asked during the second
interview whether they had heard or read anything about racial prejudice or
discrimination since the previous interview, only 10 per cent spontaneously
recalled the sermon. When the remaining 90 per cent were asked directly whether
their minister "talked about prejudice or discrimination in the last couple of
weeks," more than 30 per cent denied hearing such a sermon. It is hardly
surprising that the sermons had so little impact on racial attitudes!

When you stop to think about it, the preacher has so many
hurdles to surmount, it's no wonder that preaching so often fails to affect our
actions. As figure 2 indicates, the preacher must deliver a message which not
only gets our attention but is understandable, persuasive, memorable and likely
to compel action. Our concern here is with neither theological content nor
oratorical style, but with how to create and receive a memorable, persuasive
message. What factors make for effective communication? How might ministers
apply these

factors in the construction of more potent messages? For that
matter, how might any of us who teach, speak or write do so with greatest
effect? Finally, what can we lay people do to receive maximum benefit from what
we hear and read? Recent research has revealed five keys to help us answer these
questions.

Five Keys

1.Vivid, concrete examples are more potent than
abstract information. We noted in chapter four that our judgments and
attitudes are often more swayed by specific illustrations than by abstract
assertions of general truth. For example, research studies show that a few good
testimonials usually have more impact than statistically summarized data from
dozens of people. Not surprisingly, the mastectomies performed on Betty Ford and
Happy Rockefeller did more to increase visits to cancer detection clinics than
all the reports of the National Institute of Health. Likewise, viewing the movie
Jaws gave many swimmers a fear of sharks which no factual data on actual shark
attacks could eliminate.

Concrete examples are not only more compelling, but they are
also better remembered. Joanne Martin and her colleagues at Stanford University
have observed that concepts are better remembered when concrete details are
included.2They had Coast Guard recruits read one of
the following paragraphs and then write everything they could recall from it.
Those who read the following abstract description of what happens when a Coast
Guard regulation is broken recalled only 27 per cent of the words
afterward:

If a new Seaman Apprentice breaks a Coast Guard regulation, and
this frequently happens, then he usually gets caught. If he gives serious
personal excuses for what he did, then the Executive Officer usually will not
accept such excuses. Executive Officers usually refer the matter to mast.
Usually in these cases the defendant is found guilty. If the new Seaman
Apprentice is found guilty, then he will be sentenced with a variety of
punishments.

Other recruits read a concrete instance of this
information:

Robert Christensen, a new Seaman Apprentice, reported for duty
on the CG Cutter Seagull two days late. His excuse for being late was that his
father had become seriously ill while he was visiting home. The Executive
Officer did not accept his excuse. He referred the matter to mast. Seaman
Apprentice Christensen was found guilty and sentenced to one month extra duty, a
$50 fine each month for two months, and one month restriction.

Those given this anecdotal paragraph not only recalled almost
twice as many words as those given the abstract paragraph; they were about twice
as likely to recall concepts such as "found guilty."

No experienced writer will be surprised by this finding. As
William Strunk and E. B. White assert in their classic The Elements of Style,
"If those who have studied the art of writing are in accord on any one point, it
is on this: the surest way to arouse and hold the attention of the reader is by
being specific, definite, and concrete. The greatest writers - Homer, Dante,
Shakespeare - are effective largely because they deal in
particulars."3Preachers and teachers should do the
same, and so should we listeners, by conjuring up our own examples when the
speaker begins to get abstract.

However, a sermon is never just a string of unrelated examples;
the preacher aims to communicate a basic point. We might say that theological
truth is to a good sermon what the base of an iceberg is to its tip. Jesus'
vivid parables, for example, embodied basic truths in memorable pictures. And
what pastor has not received compliments from adults for a simple but concrete
children's sermon? The children may have been unable to grasp the analogy being
drawn, but the adults understood and remembered it. This illustrates the power
of principle number one: vivid, concrete examples are more potent than abstract
information.

2.Messages which relate to what people
already know or have experienced are more easily remembered. Public
speaking experts have long supposed this to be true. Aristotle urged speakers to
adapt the message to their audiences. Experimental psychologists have confirmed
the point; messages that are unrelated to people's existing ideas or experiences
are difficult to comprehend and are quickly forgotten. This paragraph, from an
experiment by John Bransford and Marcia Johnson, is an example of such an
"unattached" message:

The procedure is actually quite simple. First you arrange things
into different groups. Of course, one pile may be sufficient depending on how
much there is to do.... After the procedure is completed, one arranges the
materials into different groups again. Then they can be put into their proper
places. Eventually they will be used once more and the whole cycle will then
have to be repeated. However, that is a part of life.

When Bransford and Johnson had people read this paragraph as you
just did, without connecting it to anything they already knew about, little of
it was remembered. When people were told that the paragraph was about sorting
laundry, something familiar to them, they remembered much more of it - as you
probably could now if you reread it.4

When a message builds on our knowledge and experience, we not
only more easily understand and remember it, but we are also more likely to
recall it when that knowledge or experience comes again into consciousness. In
other words, a message that is hooked to some cue - something we will think
about or experience again - is more likely to come to mind in the future. When
the cue pops up, it may call to mind the message associated with it. For
example, one preacher said that much American religion was like waiting room
Muzak - bland and soothing. A year after this "Sound of Muzak" sermon was
preached, we found ourselves eating dinner in a room with music softly playing
in the background. Some one noticed the music - and recalled the
sermon.

If preachers and teachers are to build their messages on their
people's knowledge and experience, then they must know their people. One
advantage which local pastors, teachers and youth workers have over mass-media
preachers is a more intimate knowledge of the experiences of their people. When
pastors systematically seek out their parishioners for deep conversation, they
are engaging in sermon preparation as well as pastoral ministry. When we
parishioners freely talk to our pastors about our concerns, we help them know
what sermon themes will touch us as well as what we need. This is another
implication of principle number two: messages which relate to what people
already know or have experienced are most easily remembered.

3. Spaced repetition aids memory. As every student of
human learning knows well, we remember information much better if it is
presented to us repeatedly, especially if the repetitions are spaced over time
rather than grouped together. Experimental psychologist Lynn Hasher has found
that repeated information is also more credible.5When statements, such as "The largest museum in the world is the Louvre in
Paris," were repeatedly presented, people rated them as more likely to be true
than when they had been shown infrequently. Social psychologists have uncovered
a parallel phenomenon: repeated presentation of a stimulus - whether a human
face, a Chinese character or a piece of unfamiliar music - generally increases
people's liking of it.

Speakers can capitalize on this finding that repetition,
especially spaced repetition, makes messages more memorable and appealing. When
preparing a talk or sermon they might ask themselves, What do I most want people
to remember from this? They can then repeat that one key idea numerous times.
(We suspect that a little informal testing of parishioners' recall would reveal
that few people can recall the main points of the last three-point sermon they
heard.) Given the limitations of human memory, the advice of Henry Grady Davis
appears sound: A sermon should be "the embodiment of one vigorous idea." Perhaps
this could even be taken a step further: that idea should be embodied in the
whole worship service - the Scriptures, music, prayers and closing charge to the
congregation. As parishioners we should look for a unifying theme, or at least
identify one idea in every service that is significant for us.

Sometimes the key idea can be captured in a single statement or
pithy saying that becomes the trunk of a talk or sermon, unifying the
illustrative branches which grow from it. Who can forget the refrain in Martin
Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" sermon? Principle number three bears
repeating: spaced repetition aids retention.

4. Active listening aids memory and facilitates attitude
change. People remember information best when they have actively processed
it, that is, when they have put it in their own words. When we read or hear
something that prompts a thought of our own, we will often more readily remember
our thought than the information which prompted it. University of Toronto
psychologists Norman Slamecka and Peter Graf recently found that people can more
easily recall information they have produced than information they have been
told to memorize.6For example, people who were
given the word rapid and were asked to produce a synonym beginning with
the letter "f" later remembered the word fast better than did people
asked directly to remember fast.

Not only do we better remember information we produce ourselves,
but our attitudes are also more likely to be changed by that information. For
example, social psychologists have found that passive exposure to information,
through reading or listening, has less effect on people's attitudes than
information they got through active participation in a group discussion. Other
research confirms that when we passively learn something our attitudes toward it
usually do not change much. When we are stimulated into restating information in
our own terms, we are much more likely to remember it and to be persuaded by
it.

Preachers, teachers and even parents may fail to recognize that
their spoken words are more prominent to them (as active speakers) than to their
passive listeners. Parents are often amazed at their children's capacity to
ignore them. If, instead of constant harping, the parent gently asks the child
to restate the request ("Andy, what did I ask you to do?"), the child's act of
verbalizing the request will make him or her more aware of it. Mister Rogers,
the television friend of pre-schoolers, applies this principle by asking a
question and then saying nothing for a few moments, allowing children to answer
for themselves. Preachers would be well advised to do likewise, pausing after
giving an instruction or raising a thought-provoking question.

People who run an idea through their minds are also more likely
to act on it. This is implied by research on the impact of participating in a
public opinion poll, conducted by Michael Traugott and John Katosh of the
University of Michigan.7Those who rehearse their
political attitudes by participating in a pre-election survey more often act on
them by voting in the election than do people not selected for the survey. For
this reason, too, listeners should be provoked to repeat and restate what they
hear.

As listeners we can discipline ourselves to listen actively.
Taking notes on a sermon, as any serious student does in class, forces us to
repeat and restate its main points. So does discussing it with someone else.
William James made the point eighty years ago: "No reception without reaction,
no impression without correlative expression - this is the great maxim which the
teacher ought never to forget."8James anticipated
principle number four: active listening aids memory and facilitates attitude
change.

5.Attitudes and beliefs are shaped by action.
If social psychological research has established anything, it is, as noted in
chapter two, that our actions influence our attitudes. Every time we act, we
amplify the idea lying behind what we have done, especially when we feel some
responsibility for having committed the act. It seems that we are as likely to
believe in what we have stood up for as to stand up for what we believe.
Moreover, this principle is paralleled by the biblical idea that growth in faith
is a consequence of obedient action as well as its source.

The implication of this "attitudes follow actions" principle is
clear: a message is most likely to stimulate faith if it calls forth a specific
action. The effective talk or sermon will not leave people wondering what to do
with it. It will suggest specific actions, or it will stimulate listeners to
form their own plan of action. "How will 'Love your neighbor' affect you?" the
speaker might ask. "Who are you going to phone or visit this week?"

Just Remember

These five research-based principles for constructing a
memorable and persuasive message can be wedded to a variety of speaking styles
and theological orientations. Just remember:

1. Vivid, concrete ____________ are more potent
than abstract information.

2. Messages which relate to what people already
______ or have ____________ are most easily remembered.

3. Spaced _______ aids retention.

4. Active ___________ aids memory and facilitates
attitude change.

5. Attitudes and beliefs are shaped by
________.

And if you really want to remember these principles, look away
and repeat them in your own words. Better yet, tell someone else about them or
pick out one or two and think about how you might apply them to the next talk
you prepare or hear.

The Word of God has power to change lives (Heb 4:12) but "how
are they to hear without a preacher?" (Rom 10:14 RSV). The charge to communicate
compels us to do it effectively.

7

The Cost of
Rewards

MOST PEOPLE PAY TO play golf;
a few play for the pay. Some grow roses for the sheer fun of it; others do so to
earn a living. My kindergarten daughter can hardly wait for the weekend to end -
with Monday returns the excitement of school! But my fifth- and seventh-grade
sons are already counting the days until vacation. A colleague finds his daily
seven-mile run exhilarating. My painful two miles keeps me in shape.

Means versus Ends: Why Do It?

People engage in the same action for different reasons. What one
person finds to be an end in itself, another sees as merely a means to an end.
Intrinsically motivated action is done for its own sake. The task is
inherently interesting, challenging and enjoyable. Extrinsically
motivated action is performed with some other goal in mind. The
reward - a gold star, a dollar bill, a promotion - is not built into the
activity itself.

Educators, employers and advertisers recognize the value of
intrinsic motivation. Children who find challenge and satisfaction in study not
only learn more, they are fun to teach. Employees who enjoy their work not only
produce a better product, they require less surveillance. And consumers who are
convinced a product is the best on the market don't need rebates.

The problem is that some activities are simply not intrinsically
challenging or satisfying. Yet they must be performed. Other activities may have
the potential of bringing satisfaction, but people simply refuse to attempt
them. In both cases, introducing a little extrinsic motivation works miracles.
In fact, it is one of psychology's most firmly established principles. The
promise of reward or threat of punishment is often the easiest and most
effective way of influencing someone. The offer of $5 for each passing grade on
a report card can produce a sudden change in a child's study habits. Placing
employees on a piecework schedule of pay may dramatically increase their
productivity. And our family's choice of toothpaste is readily bent by the size
of the manufacturer's rebate offer. The principle works. Extrinsic rewards
motivate people. We use them and respond readily to them.

The distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation has
been important in the psychology of religion as well. In his book The
Individual and His Religion, Gordon Allport attempted to explain how
religion functions in people's lives. He distinguished between two kinds of
religious outlooks or orientations which he later labeled the extrinsic and the
intrinsic.1For some, said Allport, religious
activity is extrinsically motivated. It is a way to get such things as social
status, business contacts, self-justification or security. Extrinsic people tend
to make statements like "A primary reason for my interest in religion is that my
church is a congenial social activity." For others, reasoned Allport, religious
experience is an end in itself. They find meaning and purpose in their religious
commitment, and their faith provides direction to all of life. These
intrinsically motivated people are likely to say, "My religious beliefs are what
really lie behind my whole approach to life."

Allport's distinction parallels what the Old Testament prophets
Hosea and Amos argued centuries ago. Distinguishing between religious ceremonies
and righteousness, between burnt offerings and the knowledge of God, between
sacrifices and steadfast love, the prophets sharply contrasted religion as
ritual with religion as loyalty. In more contemporary terms we often distinguish
between "nominal" and "committed" Christians. For some, faith is superficial and
isolated from most of life. For others it's the moving force. Even within the
church, where you'd expect everyone to agree that religious faith is central,
differences exist. For some worship and service are a burden. Others experience
their responsibilities to God as more than a duty: they find joy and
satisfaction in meeting them.

Rewards in the Church

Just as teachers and employers in schools and industry recognize
the value of intrinsic motivation, so do most of those directing evangelism and
education programs in the church. They also know how difficult it is to foster!
As has happened in other settings, they resort to extrinsic
motivators.

Two recent experiences remind me of how we apply the reward
principle in church. Just a week ago my younger son returned from his first
Sunday-school class of the season. He announced that his teacher has promised a
"nice prize" to each student who maintains perfect attendance. And for the last
several Thursdays we have received tracts distributed by another local church,
apparently as part of their evangelism program. Each has been a variation on the
theme of how those who repent will escape hell's eternal torture and will
instead enjoy heaven's lavish rewards.

The use of rewards to shape behavior in the church has a long
history. Benjamin Franklin reported that a Navy chaplain improved sailors'
attendance at worship services by serving a round of rum after each
service.2Having grown up near Chicago, I recall how
local churches operated a mission on Skid Row. Fortunately, not rum but coffee
and sandwiches were used on Friday nights to attract alcoholics. However, the
down-and-outers were required first to sit through a lengthy sermon calling them
to repentance.

In The Human Reflex Rodger Bufford reviews the variety
of ways the reward principle has been used in Christian education and
evangelism. The Bible Memory Association promotes memorization of Scripture
verses by awarding prizes at three-week intervals for successful work. Each
individual pays a small fee to participate and then memorizes a given number of
Bible verses focused on a particular theme. In addition to the prizes awarded
every three weeks, children who master an entire book may attend summer camp at
a reduced rate. Bufford cites how one Christian family adopted a similar
approach, making dessert with the evening meal contingent on the recital of
Bible verses!

Social rewards are frequently used as motivators in church
programs. Learners can take part in some fun activity with others if they
successfully complete the Sunday-school lesson or Bible study assignment. So
teachers may tell their young students, "When you have all finished in your work
books, we will play a game." Women in one carefully structured Bible study
program were told they could go to the group's monthly social only if they had
completed the work for their weekly Bible study classes. The Christian Service
Brigade program makes special outings contingent on successful achievement in a
variety of areas, including Bible study.

Social attention and approval are powerful reinforcers for both
children and adults. Charismatic leaders on the fringe of Christianity use them
effectively. A potential convert attending the group's meeting for the first
time finds herself the object of "love bombing." She feels warm and accepted as
the leader presents the group as a closely knit family united by ties of
affection and common purpose. The invitation to become part of the family proves
irresistible.

Finally, perhaps most significantly, the Christian message
itself has been presented only in terms of its instrumentality. Look what
becoming a Christian will do for you! Ministers, teachers and missionaries are
encouraged to fit their presentations to the needs of the audience. Learn where
your people are at and preach accordingly! If their problem is physical illness,
present a God who takes away suffering. Do they feel inferior? Preach a God who
accepts them as they are. If they have recently suffered economic loss, they
need a God of power and success. Just listen to the Sunday television preachers.
Faith produces deliverance from every imaginable human problem.

Why Not Use Them?

The strongest argument against using rewards in the church is
that it fosters self-centered religion. The worship of God and service to others
recede into the background while our own needs move to the fore. The teaching of
Scripture "to lose self" is muffled. The message that God as God has the right
to our loyalty and that we are obligated to obey is not heard. No longer do we
hear Christ say, "Any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my
disciple" (Lk 14:33 NIV).

The objection is valid. Some within the Christian community seem
strangely unaware that Christian faith is any thing more than the means of
satisfying their personal need. God apparently exists only to please people, not
the other way around.

Others say that while true faith does involve the worship of
God, rewards and appeals to personal needs can motivate first steps in that
direction. People must find that God meets their needs before they are able or
willing to commit their lives in obedient service to him. Jesus is first Savior,
then Lord. Sunday television preachers sometimes argue, "We first grab their
attention. Later we gain the commitment."

Such thinking, that extrinsic rewards enhance intrinsic
motivation, used to be generally accepted in psychology. Children given quarters
for completing their math assignments should eventually discover that math is
indeed worth studying. Adults given electric shock for smoking should find clear
lungs and a fresh, unparched mouth so delightful that they give up the habit
permanently.

The Hidden Costs

Recent research reveals, however, that rewards do not always
have such positive consequences. Although rewards shape behavior, they have
"hidden costs."3Often their effects evaporate soon
after they are terminated. Worse, they sometimes undermine the very intrinsic
motivation they were supposed to engender.

The detrimental effect is clearly seen in the results of one
study of preschool children.4Half the children were
induced to work on a set of plastic jigsaw puzzles with the promise of an even
more rewarding activity later. Others were not promised the more enjoyable
activity. After playing with the puzzles for some time, all the children were
allowed to engage in the more rewarding activity. Some days later the kids were
turned loose on the puzzles. Those who had earlier worked on the puzzles in
order to gain the more rewarding activity now played with them less. By bribing
the children to play with the puzzles the experimenter had turned play into
work.

Philip Zimbardo relates the amusing story of Nunzi, a shoemaker
and an Italian immigrant.5Every day after school a
gang of young, American boys came to his shop to taunt and to tease. After
attempting in a variety of ways to get the boys to stop, Nunzi hit upon the
following solution.

When they arrived the next day after school, he was in front of
his store waving a fistful of dollar bills. "Don't ask me why," said Nunzi, "but
I'll give each of you a new dollar bill if you will shout at the top of your
lungs ten times: 'Nunzi is a dirty Italian swine.' " Taking the money, the boys
shouted the chants in unison. The next afternoon Nunzi successfully enticed the
gang to repeat their taunts for a mere half dollar. On the third day, however,
he stood with a handful of dimes:

"Business has not been good and I can only give you each ten
cents to repeat your marvelous performance of yesterday."

"You must be crazy," said the ringleader, "to think we would
knock ourselves out screaming and cursing for a lousy dime."

"Yah," said another. "We got better things to do with our time
than to do favors for dumb Guineas for only a dime." And away the boys went,
never to bother Nunzi again.

Do rewards undermine motivation in adults as well? Many studies
now show this to be so. In one experiment college students worked on an
interesting puzzle for an hour.6Half of the
subjects were paid a dollar for each of four puzzle solutions they correctly
produced; the other half did the same puzzle for no pay. Later all the students
were left in a free-choice situation where they could work on other puzzle
solutions, read magazines or do anything else they pleased. Those who had been
rewarded for solutions showed less interest in working the new puzzles. Rewards
had again turned the play into work. Extrinsic rewards undermined intrinsic
motivation.

Similarly, adults who were paid to lose weight lost pounds
faster than those not paid. But when payments stopped, the former subjects
regained some of the lost weight while the latter continued to lose. Research
indicates that rewards can even cast a pall over romantic love. Dating couples
were asked to think of either the extrinsic rewards (for example, "she/he knows
a lot of people") or the intrinsic rewards (for example, "we always have a good
time together") they obtained from going out with their
partners.7When later asked to state their feelings,
the couples who had thought about the extrinsic rewards evaluated themselves as
being less in love than did those who had thought about intrinsic
rewards.

Not all psychologists agree on how these findings should be
explained. One interpretation, as I have suggested, is that extrinsic rewards
lead people to view an activity differently. They convey to people that the
activity does not deserve doing in its own right. Why else would someone offer
rewards? People therefore come to see the activity as a means rather than an
end, and their actions come under the control of the extrinsic reward. They
begin unconsciously to ask, "Is this reward enough to make me want to do 'the
work'?" The action, project or whatever is not even considered for itself. If
the reward is eventually withdrawn, they judge the activity no longer worth
doing.

Does this research on the hidden costs of rewards mean we should
never use rewards in our homes, schools or churches? Certainly not. But the
findings do suggest we carefully examine how they are used.

How Should We Use Rewards?

Without question, extrinsic rewards motivate people while they
are applied. So if we are trying to influence a person to engage in some
activity on a short-term basis, the reward route may be the best one to travel.
Or if we are convinced the activity will always be inherently boring and
distasteful yet has to be performed, rewards may provide the only route. But if
we are concerned about fostering intrinsic motivation, if we want our children
"taught to live in such a way as to carry out their responsibilities to God and
find joy and delight in so doing," then we will use rewards cautiously in our
education and evangelism programs.8And we will
certainly avoid them where they aren't necessary.

What effect do the frequent appeals to personal need and the
ready use of rewards in presenting the gospel have on its credibility? Does the
emphasis on comfort before challenge interfere with rather than facilitate
others' coming to the truth? Does it in effect say that the Christian lifestyle
has little worth or merit in itself? In offering children prizes to get them to
memorize Scripture, we might be communicating the message "Really there's
nothing in that book worth knowing for its own sake."

Edward Deci suggests, however, that extrinsic rewards do not
always undermine intrinsic motivation.9In certain
cases they may actually increase it. Deci claims that every reward - whether
money, praise, gold stars or candy bars - has two aspects: a controlling aspect
and an informational aspect. The controlling aspect is what satisfies the need
and develops the link between the behavior and the reward. In contrast, the
informational aspect of a reward conveys to people how well they are doing in
meeting the challenge of a particular task. According to Deci, the effect
rewards have on people depends on which aspect is the more conspicuous. If the
controlling aspect is more obvious, the person is less likely to be
intrinsically motivated. But if the informational aspect is salient, intrinsic
motivation may actually be enhanced.

What determines whether the controlling or informational aspect
of a reward will be more obvious? In part, it's how they are presented. In one
study children were offered prizes for playing with a
drum.10For one group the prize was in plain view.
For the other group the prize was absent, and the leaders made no further
mention of it during performance. Only the obvious reward produced a significant
decrease in intrinsic motivation. Evidently a clearly imaged reward siphons
attention away from what becomes the means of getting it.

Anticipated rewards seem to have more serious (and negative)
consequences than unanticipated rewards. People are more likely to see the
latter as giving them information about their good performance; after all, no
attempt was made to bribe them. Rather than emphasizing rewards from the outset
to control a class, perhaps teachers might better use them occasionally as an
unexpected bonus.

Deci reports that teacher characteristics also have an impact on
children's intrinsic motivation.11Those who valued
order and control in the classroom tended to use rewards as sanctions. Those who
favored autonomy, encouraging kids to take responsibility for their own actions,
tended to use rewards informationally. The former undermined intrinsic
motivation while the latter actually fostered it.

Our View of God's Call

Christian ministers, teachers and missionaries all have their
own styles of presenting the Christian message. One thing that significantly
shapes their presentations, however, is how they view the nature of God's call.
Some seem to view the commands of Scripture as though God had arbitrarily
conceived them and then decided to enforce them through reward and punishment.
For others the commands come from a loving God whose requirements for our lives
are consistent with the way he has created us and with what is best for us. I
follow the latter view.

In telling us how we ought to live, God is at the same time
telling us how he made us. He informs us of what constitutes the whole person.
His prescriptions are really descriptions of what it means to be a complete,
fulfilled human being. The point Christians who so eagerly seek God's favor have
missed is that the most significant blessings he gives in this life are
inherent inobedience itself. They are not granted simply as a
consequence of it. In calling us to be more than mere listeners of the Word but
doers also, James writes, "The man who looks intently into the perfect law that
gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but
doing it - he will be blessed in what he does" (Jas 1:25NIV).

Probably no story in the New Testament better demonstrates our
tendency to miss the blessings that are intrinsic to obedient lives than the
familiar parable of the prodigal son. We sympathize with the response of the
older brother who objects to the party his father is throwing for the son who
was lost but has now returned. Like this older brother, we fail to see the good
news that salvation and all its benefits are now and are part of living
in a right relationship to God our Father.

Self-centered religion misses the central call of Scripture to
worship God. It fails to recognize that God has the right to expect our
obedience and that he has this right simply be cause he is God - apart from his
capacity to deliver favors or punishments. Ironically, self-centered faith not
only misses God's truth, but it also misses his richest blessings. As we noted
in chapter three, the refreshing gospel promise is that Christ frees us from
self-obsession, frees us to find contentment and peace. Those who come to Christ
for the reward will miss the best "reward" that is inherent in the relationship
itself.

One of the paradoxes of the Christian life is that the good
things God grants come not by deliberately seeking them but as a by-product of
turning our lives over to him. While ultimately the Christian life brings
fulfillment, that cannot be the goal. To the degree fulfillment is made our
goal, it will be lost. God made people to serve him. Only when our commitment,
loyalty and allegiance are to him do we come to know what it means to be fully
human. It is a by-product of self-transcendence. Christ makes it clear: "For
whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me
and for the gospel will save it" (Mk 8:35 NIV).

These words show us how false it is to distinguish between Jesus
Christ as Savior and as Lord. Yet, rather strangely, it is a distinction that we
in the Christian community continue to make. We think a life of obedience is
optional for those who are saved. Yet Jesus' words are clear. His being Lord and
Savior are a unity. They come together, or not at all. "For whoever seeks
extrinsic rewards will lose intrinsic joy, but whoever relinquishes the
self-serving quest in order to serve me will find true fulfillment."

8

Conformity: A Way
Out

IN ONE OF THE segments from
the television program "Candid Camera," an unsuspecting person waits in an
office building for an elevator. The elevator arrives, the doors open, and the
passenger steps in. One by one others follow but then proceed to behave
strangely: they all face the back. The victim peers quizzically at each, fidgets
nervously, and then meekly conforms.

The Impact of Others

While the two previous chapters dealt with our attempts to
influence others, these next two are concerned with how we ourselves are
influenced. Although we like to think of ourselves as independent, other
people's influence is difficult to resist. It often shapes our thoughts, our
actions, our choices. Some of the classical experiments in social psychology
have verified its power. What others tell us to do or even how they act
sometimes affects our behavior more than does our own perception of what is
right.

Imagine you have volunteered to participate in an experiment on
visual judgment. You and seven other participants are seated in front of two
cards on which are lines of varying lengths. Your task is to judge which of
three lines is closest in length to a fourth, which serves as the standard. It
is clear to you that line B is the correct answer. But the first person to make
a judgment looks carefully at the lines and says, "Line A." To your surprise, so
does the second, the third and so on down the line. When your turn finally
comes, what will you say? Will you agree with the majority, or will you exercise
critical judgment and state what you believe is right?

Asked to predict their own reaction, most people say they will
resist influence and report what they know is right. That's what Peter thought,
too, before denying Jesus. How ever, the results of the study indicate
otherwise. They demonstrate the powerful effects of an incorrect majority on
subjects' responses. Only a quarter of the subjects were able to resist the
false norm consistently.1

Why do we conform to those around us? One reason is our need to
gain others' approval, or to avoid their disapproval. For example, some of those
who went along with the group in judging the line lengths did so to avoid
appearing different or deviant. They feared being rejected.

Violating social expectations or constraints can be traumatic.
Stanley Milgram offers a challenge to those who think it's easy. "Get on a bus,"
he says, "and sing out loud. Full throated song now, no humming." While many
think it can be readily done, not one in a hundred is able to do it. Or another
of Milgram's challenges, one he himself tried, is to board the subway and ask a
stranger for his seat.2After several attempts in
which the words lodged in his throat, Milgram finally choked out the request.
Experiencing a moment of panic, he found the man actually giving up his seat.
After taking his place, Milgram reported he had an overwhelming need to behave
in a way that justified the request. He writes, "I actually felt as if I were
going to perish." Only after he was off the train did the tension
disappear.

All of us can recite examples from our own lives. Others'
pressure, real or imagined, overwhelms us, and we act differently than we would
if we were alone, even in ways that violate our Christian conscience. How
difficult not to join in approval of that humorous story that disparages another
ethnic group or the other sex. And when our children come with their requests
that reflect the latest fad at school or on the block, we can give in to their
desires; acquiescence is easier than denial, even when it conflicts with what we
know should be the answer.

Ten years ago our home was situated in the middle of an old
apple orchard. Today we have many close neighbors. While for me the expenditure
necessary to maintain a watered and weed-free lawn is at best questionable, I'm
sensitive to neighborhood pressure - usually implicit, occasionally explicit -
to do something about the one weed- haven on the block. On occasion new students
recount the difficulty they are having adjusting to college and particularly to
living in the campus residence halls. They've found their lifestyle different
from that of other students. And they are uneasy as they see themselves
conforming when they know they should resist.

Rejection is painful. To obey God rather than people can be
agonizing. We may believe that God's approval has first priority. We may even be
convinced that we will withstand tempting influences. Still, the task of being
in and not of this world is extraordinarily difficult. When the chips are down,
when we have little time or opportunity to reflect on our choice of action, when
God seems distant and the pressure is present, we flow with the crowd. With
Peter we say by our actions that we "don't know the man."

Milgram's Studies of Obedience

To what degree can social pressure lead us to violate our moral
standards? Is it possible that someone can induce us to engage in harmful,
destructive acts? Milgram tried to answer this question in what have become the
most famous studies in social
psychology.3

As mentioned in chapter two, men from diverse backgrounds and
occupations were recruited to participate in an experiment said to investigate
the effects of punishment on learning. The participant was assigned the role of
teacher. His task was to deliver an electric shock to the "student" whenever a
mistake was made on a simple learning task. The switches on the shock generator
ranged from a mild 15 volts to a supposedly dangerous 450 volts. The
experimenter instructed the teacher to begin punishment of initial errors with
the mild shock and to raise the voltage each time an additional error was made
until the highest voltage was being administered. The "student" was an
accomplice of the experimenter who, although he received no shock, had been
carefully coached to act as though he did. When the student made many mistakes
and loudly protested the shocks, the experimenter told the teacher to continue
raising the voltage. How far did subjects go? When Milgram described the
experiment to psychiatrists, college students and middle-class adults, virtually
no one expected anyone to proceed to the end. The psychiatrists guessed one in a
thousand. Contrary to expectation, almost two-thirds of the participants fully
obeyed, delivering the greatest possible shock.

How could subjects bring themselves to continue shocking the
victim? Were they evil people? No, they were not unusually hostile or vicious
people. Many belonged to Christian churches and, when asked, firmly stated their
moral opposition to injuring others.

Some participants were totally convinced of the wrongness of
what they were doing. Yet they succumbed to social pressure. They were afraid
that if they broke off they would appear arrogant, discourteous or impolite. One
participant, obviously concerned over the welfare of the learner, said to the
experimenter, "I don't mean to be rude, sir, but don't you think you should look
in on him?" Even the minority who refused to comply in the Milgram study did not
reprimand the experimenter for his evil instruction.

John Sabini and Maury Silver have noted the difficulty most of
us have in resisting wrongdoing.4To question
another's behavior openly is crude, uncivil. Even when our rights are violated
we are reluctant to object. Better to suffer through the annoying cigarette
smoke than to confront the passenger in the seat beside you. And going to the
library is less painful than reminding a suitemate to observe quiet hours.
Intervening on behalf of another is even more difficult. Who wants to be a
meddler? As I left the grocery store last Saturday morning an advocate of
children's rights was distributing leaflets. Apparently an advertising campaign
is even necessary to get people to report child abuse. Adolph Eichmann stated
that the most potent factor in soothing his own conscience was that no one
dissented against the Final Solution.

Were Milgram's subjects merely unwilling participants coerced
against their better judgment to do evil? Hardly. To view them so is to overlook
other important lessons of the study. More subtle forces were also at
work.

The Need for Information

Conformity sometimes stems not from our wanting people to like
or admire us, but rather from our need to understand ourselves and make sense
out of the world. One line of thinking is this: Others, particularly those we
respect, may know something we do not know; hence they may provide us with
evidence about reality, even about ourselves. By believing and acting as others
do, we may gain the benefit of their knowledge.

Another "Candid Camera" clipping provides an amusing example of
this "informational" conformity. Three "Candid Camera" art critics (actually
actors) assess the aesthetic merit of an abstract painting. Their enthusiastic
evaluations are lengthy and involved, and even include identification of
hypothetical objects in the painting. Outside observers are impressed. They
agree with these experts. Suddenly one of the experts notices that they have the
wrong painting. Quickly the critics reverse their opinion. And so do the
onlookers.

This informational influence is different from conformity
produced by blatant pressure. Here there is not simply a temporary behavior
change in violation of our beliefs. Change is more pervasive, more lasting. The
presence of others shapes our inner perspectives, our opinions. And because
informational influence generates so little conflict, and may in fact even
reduce tension, we are less conscious of it.

Milgram argues that in general people have a strong tendency to
accept definitions of reality provided by legitimate authority. Thus in his
study we should not view the relationship between the experimenter and subject
as one in which a coercive figure merely forces actions from an unwilling
subordinate. Rather a legitimate authority redefines the meaning of the
situation and the subject accepts it. You are no longer delivering a painful
shock; rather you are assisting in the lofty pursuit of scientific
knowledge.

Not only do authorities shape our perception of reality. Muzafer
Sherif's studies using the "autokinetic phenomenon" show how peers may define
for us an ambiguous situation.5The phenomenon is
produced by projecting a still spot of light on the wall in a dark room. After a
few moments, an illusion occurs: the light seems to move. How far does it move?
Estimates vary greatly.

In Sherif's study several subjects were taken into a darkened
room and asked to estimate how far the light moved. While initial judgments
varied considerably, after a while their estimates converged. Influenced by each
other, they typically developed a common false belief. But each was unaware that
his interpretation of reality was being shaped by the people around him. Social
influence extends far beyond our yielding against our better judgment. Others
can shape the judgment itself.

Are we Christians as sensitive as we should be to informational
conformity? To whom do we look for answers to basic questions? Where do our
standards come from - from Scripture, the church or simply the society in which
we live? Paul's counsel "Do not be conformed to this world" warns against subtle
social influences that alter our perspective and commitment. The world's
pervasive influence is recognized by Paul in his command "Be transformed" (Rom
12:2 RSV). Clearly he sees the problem of conformity to this world as extending
beyond relatively insignificant beliefs and actions to the core of our being, to
our perceptions of reality, our most central beliefs and values. Otherwise the
familiar warning against conformity would not be followed with a call for
transformation, for a change relating to the entire person.

John Alexander writes, "From our perspective we need only
moderate change. Our way of life is only tilted a little to one side.... I
suggest that Jesus came to tell us things that are not obvious and that he
offered a worldview that is quite contrary to the worldview of our
culture."6In The Upside- Down Kingdom,
Donald Kraybill argues that the kingdom of God is inverted when compared with
the generally accepted values of American society. He writes, "Following Jesus
means not only a turning around in some personal habits and attitudes, but most
fundamentally it means a completely new way of thinking - a new logic. To follow
Jesus means a complete upsetting of the assumptions, logic, values, and
presuppositions of the dominant culture."7Thus the
Christian's mindset changes when informed by Scripture. Definitions of success
are inverted as self-sacrifice replaces self-seeking, compassion supplants
ambition, sharing overcomes consumption, enemies are loved not hated and status
hierarchies are flattened.

What's a Christian to Do?

The conformity research has implications for Christian
lifestyle. Most fundamentally this social psychological literature questions our
individualism, our refusal to recognize that we are interdependent and that we
do influence each other. The illusion of independence pervades the church. We
not only underestimate the problem of conformity to this world, but when we do
recognize it our attempt to deal with it is often misguided. We think the
solution is found in developing greater independence; we teach our children,
"Dare to be a Daniel; dare to stand alone."

Living as Christians is necessarily a community task. It
requires social support. Without a sustaining environment it is hard to develop
and even more difficult to maintain a Christian lifestyle. Being created social
means that we need to be nourished; we must be encouraged by each other to live
our commitments. It's tough to maintain one's Amish identity while living alone
in San Francisco.

Social influence is not inherently evil. Without doubt our
actions are shaped by the people around us. But this very fact that can work
against a Christian lifestyle can also work to enhance it. Consider a variation
of the Milgram obedience study: Three teachers, rather than one, were assigned
the task of punishing the learner. Two of the three teachers were confederates
who had been told to disobey the experimenter after the learner's first vehement
protest. In this situation, the obedience of the remaining teacher usually
dropped dramatically. From the compliant two-thirds in the original study it
fell to 10 percent. Milgram concluded that "the mutual support provided by men
for each other is the strongest bulwark we have against the excesses of
authority.8Ironically, the majority of defiant
subjects denied that the confederate teachers' action was the critical factor in
their own defiance. This again illustrates that we are often unaware of others'
influence.

Other studies have produced similar findings when the unanimity
of the group is broken by having one member give a dissenting view. People
provided with a single ally, a partner, show much more allegiance to truth than
those who stand alone against the group. Hence disciples sent out two by two are
provided mutual support in challenging the existing social order.

Observations of small groups, together with recent laboratory
experiments, also indicate that when like-minded people interact, their initial
tendencies intensify. For example, as members of diet groups discuss their
mutual problem, their shared desire to cut their food consumption may heighten
the commitment of each. In one laboratory study separate groups composed of
relatively prejudiced or unprejudiced students were asked to respond - both
before and after discussion - to issues involving racial attitudes, such as
property rights versus open housing. Discussion among like-minded students
increased the initial gap between the two groups. Each group became stronger in
its own convictions.9

Christian fellowship can heighten spiritual identity, especially
when members concentrate their interaction among themselves. As Thomas Kempis
recognized long ago, "a devout communing on spiritual things sometimes greatly
helps the health of the soul especially when men of one mind and spirit meet and
speak and commune together." Peter and Paul, freed from jail, met with their
fellow believers and then went out to preach with, even greater boldness. The
chief dynamic of John Wesley's Methodist movement was the weekly small group
meeting. Those who heard the powerful preaching but did not experience the
support of the group sooner or later reverted to their former ways.

The Importance of Christian Community

If people are to live distinctively Christian lives, the spirit
of individualism must be overcome. Loyalty to Christ is next to impossible
without a relationship to his body, to a fellowship of Christians who contribute
to each other's upbuilding. Although time and again we are reminded that the New
Testament church was a believing community, we have lost this perspective. As
Andrew Kuyvenhoven has observed, "Many of us become positively uneasy when we
are made to realize that God wants us to contribute to the 'upbuilding' of
others - by word and deed. It is certainly a lot easier to 'attend church' than
to 'be church.' "10Arthur Gish puts it even
more strongly: "The church should not accept confessions of faith and
commitments without providing nurture and support to help people keep their
promises. We fail people by not supporting and helping them keep their
commitments."11

The fellowship of believers is necessary, however, not only for
the support it provides, but also for defining what Christian commitment means
in terms of everyday living. Jim Wallis suggests that Christians have often made
their stand against culture in the wrong places. "Twentieth century
evangelicals," he writes, "have largely ignored the most basic conflicts between
the gospel and the American culture while carefully clinging to carefully
defined separations from the world over trivial matters of personal
behavior."12Richard Foster has argued that one of the
great tasks confronting the Christian is not "Do I conform or not?" but "Which
issues demand nonconformity and which issues do
not?"13

Defining a Christian pattern of living is difficult and is
necessarily a community task. We need each other. And while the identification
of general principles will be important, more than this is needed. Even after we
have absorbed the general rules we stumble over their application.

For example, a group may identify resisting materialism as a
general goal, but what does that mean in terms of life style? Perhaps, as
Hendrik Hart and Ron Sider have suggested, we learn to practice community by
dealing with specific issues and by starting in small ways. Within the church a
few families who know they are spending too much mightmeet together to
make changes in the way they live. They can discuss family finances and evaluate
family budgets. Expenditures for houses, cars and vacations can be discussed
honestly in terms of individual needs and the needs of God's kingdom. Tips for
simpler living can be shared. And when decisions are reached, the people in the
small community can encourage, support and pray for one another.

Separate groups might form to address other issues or problems.
Those who are horrified at racism or concerned about the threat of nuclear
holocaust might consider practical ways they could implement their Christian
confession. Such groups need not become cliques nor judgmental of those in the
larger Christian community. To combat that possibility, Hart suggests that the
small communities remain open and that from time to time families change
projects.

So, in taking seriously Paul's call for nonconformity, let's
realize that neither anticonformity nor independence is the goal. Rather, as a
community we seek a new conformity and another influence, that of Jesus Christ.
In his letter to the Philippians, Paul makes it clear: "Being in full accord and
of one mind,... have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus"
(Phil 2:2, 5 RSV). This will happen only as we seek the Lord together.

9

When Groupthink Strikes

THE COUNCIL OF A SMALL but
rapidly growing church discusses plans to construct an elaborate, new facility.
The meetings spent reviewing plans are free of disagreement. Although one
council member, a middle-aged real-estate broker, has some private doubts about
the church's ability to finance the project, he hesitates to puncture the
group's enthusiasm. When he did voice his reservation over lunch with another
council member, he was told, "You lack faith." Inspired by its youthful, dynamic
pastor and certain the new building will both attract new members and enable a
host of new programs, the council unanimously votes to proceed. Bonds are sold,
a sizable bank loan secured. Yet just eighteen months later the same council
members find it impossible to meet even the interest payments on their loan.
Disaster looms. The council members wonder how they so easily reached the
decision they did.

How could such a fiasco occur? A single individual's judgment
might be clouded, but can an entire group be blind? Doesn't group discussion
sharpen perspectives, promote reflection, ensure better judgment? In chapter
eight we argued that we need others not only for social support but for help in
defining a Christian pattern of living, especially in the face of worldly
pressures. When we combine the knowledge and talents of many, we should reach
better solutions. But groups do not always have favorable consequences for their
members. What if the Christian community we are in is wrong on an important
issue? How can we avoid conformity to a mistaken view within the church? That is
the issue of this chapter.

C. S. Lewis's Screwtape recognized that a small group of
like-minded people, isolated from outside contact, may turn in on itself and
become self-serving and narrow in perspective. He writes the junior devil,
Wormwood, "We want the Church to be small not only that fewer men may know the
Enemy but also that those who do may acquire the uneasy intensity and the
defensive self-righteousness of a secret society or a
clique."1

Irving Janis provides a fascinating analysis of how group
influence may have such effects.2Janis examined the
group dynamics underlying the Vietnam war, the Bay of Pigs invasion, our failure
to be prepared for the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the invasion of North Korea.
He argues that the policy-making groups responsible for the fiascoes suffered
from groupthink. The desire to maintain group harmony had led to a suppression
of dissent. Critical judgment, independent analytical thought and the weighing
of pros and cons were subverted in an attempt to maintain consensus in the
group. Before examining groupthink in the church, let's look at the dynamics of
groupthink in general.

Groupthink: A Case Study

In the Kennedy administration's decision to invade Cuba's Bay of
Pigs, Janis identifies both the major causes and symptoms of groupthink. Perhaps
the most important cause is group cohesiveness. Kennedy's inner circle enjoyed a
strong esprit de corps; the members prized their membership in the group and
felt strongly committed to it. To maintain these good group feelings, they
suppressed disagreeable thoughts. This cohesiveness was accompanied by isolation
from outside contact; alternative viewpoints critical of the group's plans to
invade Cuba were simply not discussed. Moreover, Kennedy was a highly directive
leader who early in the group's deliberations had indicated his approval of the
plan to invade. Finally, no procedures had been established for generating and
exploring alternatives to the invasion plan. These conditions fostered a
concurrence-seeking tendency and produced the symptoms of groupthink. The high
morale fostered an illusion of invulnerability which led the group to take risks
that its members as individuals would not have considered. A second symptom of
groupthink manifested by the Kennedy team was a shared illusion of unanimity.
The group meetings in which the basic features of the invasion plan won approval
were relatively free of disagreement. Arthur Schlesinger Jr. later reflected,
"Our meetings took place in a curious atmosphere of assumed consensus. Had one
senior advisor opposed the adventure, I believe that Kennedy would have
cancelled it. No one spoke against it."3The
unanimity, however, was not real. Conflict was just beneath the surface,
camouflaged by members' reluctance to reveal their private
reservations.

What had created this feeling of unanimity? Janis saw it coming
from the self-censorship of each person and what he calls "mind-guards." The
more difficult and ambiguous the situation, the more each individual relies on
the judgment of other group members to define reality and the appropriate course
of action. And when a group of persons who respect each other's judgment arrives
at a unanimous view, each member is likely to feel the belief must be true.
Victims of groupthink keep quiet about their doubts.

Self-appointed mind-guards reproach potential deviants. At a
large birthday party for his wife, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy took
Schlesinger aside and asked him why he was opposed. Kennedy listened and finally
said, "You may be right or you may be wrong, but the President has made up his
mind. Don't push it any further."4

Social pressures to conform were also placed on group members by
the leader, President Kennedy. CIA representatives, who strongly supported the
invasion plan, were called to refute any critic. Schlesinger states that his
guilt feelings for not raising objections within the group meetings "were
tempered by the knowledge that a course of objection would have accomplished
little save to gain me a name as a nuisance."5To
disagree would have evoked disapproval from the leader as well as from other
group members.

The belief of the group in its own inherent morality coupled
with the shared stereotypes of Castro as weak, evil and stupid further justified
the decision to proceed. Group members rationalized away warning signs of
potential disaster. The decision was confirmed: a small band of Cuban exiles
secretly landed on a beachhead with the aim of overthrowing the government of
Fidel Castro. The result was a rout. Within three days the ragtag band had been
over whelmed and its secret mission traced directly to the U.S. government. It
was the "perfect failure," and John F. Kennedy asked, "How could I have been so
stupid to let them go ahead?"6

Groupthink in the Church: Some Underlying
Causes

Janis limits his study of groupthink to small decision-making
bodies in government and business. His analysis, however, has obvious
application to any area where cohesive groups make decisions. Are the conditions
which promote groupthink present in the church?

Several factors in the church may make it susceptible. To the
degree we are sensitive to the destructive effects of conforming to the larger
society, some church people may want to isolate themselves from outside contact.
Attacks on the church from outside, if there have been any, may contribute to
cohesiveness within - a sense of "us" against "them" - and make church unity an
end in itself. We reason that only a united church can defend itself against
those attacks, survive and grow. We believe that only a church free of conflict
can provide a strong and vital witness to the world. We view even quiet dissent
and disagreement as disruptive, and open conflict as destructive, as though it
might shake stability and endanger the very existence of the church. Ironically,
in our press for unity within the church, we may lose the very strength and
vitality we seek - the vigor that healthy and loving conflict can
bring.

Unthinking compliance in the church may therefore have its basis
not in apathy or laziness, but in fear of conflict. The problem is that in our
desire for consensus we easily fall into blind conformity. We do not openly
examine doubts about whether present doctrine and practice are consistent with
the Word of God. Unfortunately, our reluctance to question existing beliefs and
practices may lead to unwarranted assumptions. An early field study of a small
rural community, Elm Hollow, illustrates what may
happen.7

Elm Hollow residents were almost unanimous in saying they
disapproved of playing cards, drinking liquor and smoking ciragettes. However,
many members were more than willing to play cards, drink hard cider and smoke,
as long as it was done behind closed doors. But each resident was firmly
convinced that the others were against doing these things. Then the new pastor
began to play cards in public. The people discovered they had made unwarranted
assumptions about each others' attitudes, and the hypocrisy ended. The "existing
beliefs" had never existed at all!

Whenever we accept the apparent status quo, we basically fail to
articulate our own opinion. And Christian response to the important
social issues of our day is much needed. The church too often seems to follow
rather than lead in significant matters like racial injustice, women's rights
and the nuclear arms race. In my experience at church-related colleges, I have
observed students accepting without question what is presented in the classroom.
They are reluctant to question, to challenge, to voice dissent. And when
students do not examine critically what is taught by the light of Scripture,
they likely fail as well to integrate their learning into their world view and
lifestyle. What they say and how they live can be as separate as "belief" and
action in Elm Hollow. Generally speaking, the church will always fail where it
is not self-critical, where it fails to hold up its teachings and practices to
honest study and critical examination under the Word. It is just as necessary
for the group as it is for the individual.

Another factor which may contribute to groupthink in the church
is the false idea that faith is antagonistic to exercising critical judgment on
any issue. This distorted perspective implies that the rational analysis of a
problem, a careful search for information and independent analytical thinking
may well be proper for solving problems in government, business and education,
but they are not appropriate for resolving issues within the church; in fact,
such analysis is diametrically opposed to trusting God. In one recent church
meeting the council recommended to the full membership the construction of a new
educational complex. One concerned individual asked, "Have you surveyed the
congregation to determine its ability and willingness to meet the expense?"
Before either the council or pastor could respond, one member suggested that
such a survey was not only unnecessary but would reflect a failure to trust
God's care and willingness to bless the work of the church.

We are indeed dependent on God. But such a recognition must
never lead us to neglect our responsibility to pursue knowledge of God's will
through every available means. To fail to exercise the capacities he has given
us to learn his will for our lives is to ignore one of the major ways through
which his Spirit works. The rational analysis of a problem, the exercise of
critical judgment and the pursuit of knowledge through every legitimate means
are in keeping with the recognition of our dependence on God. They are all quite
consistent with the fervent prayer that God may guide us in arriving at
decisions that conform to his will.

Symptoms of Groupthink

We don't encourage loyalty to God by a faith that refuses to
exercise critical judgment. Such refusal readily leads to groupthink. Our own
initial ideas or impulses become identified with God's will, and we create an
illusion of invulnerability and a belief in our own inherent morality.
Alternatives are either not examined or quickly dismissed. Any suggestions to
review or reconsider, to delay temporarily or exercise caution are rationalized
as reflecting a lack of faith.

The conformity pressures that Janis found within the small
decision-making bodies in government also operate to ensure consensus in the
church. Self-appointed mind-guards frequently seek to silence any individual who
breaks the complacency surrounding current teaching or practice. The threat of
ostracism may be used to keep the potential deviant in line. It may be the
leaders within the church who experience those pressures most acutely. As Janis
indicates in his analysis of group decision making, those in positions of
leadership are in no way immune to social pressure. When a theologian questions
a teaching or practice within the church, the call to the heresy hunt often
sounds. We demand unquestioning compliance of our theologians and threaten
severe penalties for failure to yield obedience. Perhaps we should examine
whether we place undue pressure on our leaders, pressures that may contribute to
groupthink.

Of course, leaders may also exert strong social pressures on the
membership in an effort to maintain consensus within the church. Moreover, the
scriptural teaching that office bearers have been chosen by God can be readily
distorted. Human words can easily become equated with the Word of God, creating
a powerful deterrent to debate or disagreement with those in positions of
leadership. Questions concerning correct Christian belief and action will not be
raised, and we should therefore not be surprised to find in the church, as in
Elm Hollow, frequent inconsistencies between the public and the private spheres
of behavior and belief.

More subtle social pressures may also operate in the Christian
community to ensure unanimity. As we saw earlier, developing a Christian
perspective on life is a difficult and often ambiguous task. We struggle to
discover how God's Word speaks to specific issues confronting local churches and
to learn God's will for our daily lives. These are all community tasks; we look
to each other for assistance in sorting out the proper answers to these
questions.

We should be aware, however, that given our concurrence- seeking
tendency this high reliance on consensual validation can easily result in
self-censorship. Personal doubts, misgivings and questions about generally
accepted teaching and practice seldom find expression. Others' silence is
assumed to mean their full accord. The greater respect we have for each other
and for church leaders, the more likely we will keep silent about our misgivings
and minimize our doubts. In resolving controversy, we will appeal to past
teachings and credal statements rather than taking a fresh, new look at
Scripture. Thus the church may stagnate in either its understanding or
application of God's Word.

The more difficult and ambiguous the task, the more likely we
are to adhere to the established norm and to engage in self-censorship. Once the
illusion of unanimity is shattered, however, we can no longer feel complacently
self-confident about the old answers. Each person must then face the annoying
realization that there are, in fact, troublesome uncertainties and unresolved
issues.

Likewise, the more amiability and esprit de corps there is
within the group, the greater the danger that critical thinking will be replaced
by groupthink. Ironically, those groups that appear to be the most vigorous may
also be the most subject to groupthink. To the degree that important social
needs are met, a clublike atmosphere may pre-empt concern for the difficult
tasks that must be faced. The fact that many of us within the church work
together, worship together and socialize together may suppress critical thought.
The result may be a failure to offer direction and leadership in confronting the
critical issues of the day.

No one would deny, of course, that for any community to exist
its members must agree on certain basic norms. The church has that in its shared
commitment to God's Word as the foundation for its very existence. Having
clearly identified our common commitment, however, we should be open to
discussion and debate. We should realize that conflict within the church can be
constructive, that through it the church can grow, become stronger and better
promote the coming of God's kingdom. When disagreements are aired openly rather
than allowed to smolder, new understandings can develop and relationships may be
healed. The unity we share in Jesus Christ does not prevent but in fact provides
the basis for constructive disagreement and debate within the church.

Preventing Groupthink

Janis not only identified the causes and chief symptoms of
groupthink; he also proposed some techniques for preventing it. His suggestions
attempt to generate constructive conflict within a group. While they apply most
directly to the small decision-making group, we will see that, in certain cases,
the application can be readily extended to the church.

First, Janis suggests, the leader of the group should assign the
role of critical evaluator to each member. That is, the leader should encourage
members to voice objections and express doubts about the ideas and plans
presented. The exercise of independent thought and judgment should be held in
high regard rather than discouraged. It is probably important that the leader
make this norm explicit from the outset, and not assume group members will
naturally follow it. All of this means, of course, that the leader as well as
the group as a whole must be willing to consider criticism and be open to
change.

The first suggestion for avoiding groupthink has obvious
significance for church council and committee meetings. However, it also has
application at the broader church level. The church must be open to criticism
and be ready to change. Members should be encouraged to express their doubts and
concerns about established doctrines and practices of the church. While our
unvarying, infallible source of truth is the Word of God, we dare not close the
book on its proper interpretation or application. Open discussion, debate and
continuous re-evaluation should become the norm rather than the exception.
Avenues of communication must be provided which allow for a conflict of ideas,
and specific procedures might well be established through which leaders and all
people of the church may express dissent with commonly accepted teaching. Only
in this way will the church progress in its understanding of difficult doctrinal
issues as well as in providing answers to the critical problems facing our
society and world. Willingness to change is openness to the Spirit.

A second suggestion which Janis makes for avoiding groupthink is
that the group divide into subgroups to meet separately under different
chairpersons and then come back together to hammer out differences. Subgrouping
reduces the chances that the larger group will reach an immediate consensus by
not recognizing its own faulty underlying assumptions. When the church is
considering or formulating recommendations on any major issue, such as new
evangelism or building programs at the local level or specific doctrinal or
social issues at the institutional level, the work is often assigned to
committees. To avoid groupthink, Janis suggests that more than one committee or
subcommittee meet under different leadership to reach initial agreement on the
same issue. After this has been done, subgroups can re-form into one group to
reach a final decision.

Third, Janis argues that one or more outside experts be invited
in, not only to present information but also to challenge, if they wish, the
existing ideas of group members. My own experience on church committees suggests
that we rarely implement this procedure. Perhaps respect for the autonomy of
individual congregations explains why a local church committee rarely calls on
the resources or judgment of neighboring churches in reaching major program or
policy decisions. This seems to be the case even when those decisions may have
implications for all churches in the community. Similarly, while most church
councils and committees seek to maintain an "open door" policy, they are in fact
often isolated and removed from the membership of their own church. Church
leaders should not expect that most members will actively seek them out to voice
questions or objections, nor should they assume that silence or failure to
appear at committee meetings means assent with existing policy. Rather, leaders
and office bearers must often painstakingly seek out the views and questions of
the persons they serve.

On a broader level there has been a general tendency on the part
of the church to insulate itself from outside critics and to reject the notion
that anything useful could be learned from the non-Christian "expert." I recall
that as a student member of a college committee I participated in a decision to
permit on campus only speakers who shared our common Christian perspective. The
decision was hastily arrived at as a result of criticism directed at the school
for inviting a speaker who proved to be highly controversial. On reflection, the
decision was a product of groupthink, and it was fortunately reversed within
eighteen months. Nevertheless, there still exists within the church a fear that
outside critics, if listened to, will destroy us. We fail to recognize that they
may have something significant for us to hear.

To avoid groupthink Janis also suggests that leaders initially
refrain from stating their position, preference or expectation. This will permit
an atmosphere of open inquiry in which a wide range of alternatives may be
explored. Authoritarian leaders who state almost at the outset, "It's obvious
that this matter can be resolved with little discussion," or, "I would be
surprised to find anyone in disagreement with my position," are inviting
groupthink. Similarly, leaders within the church sometimes respond almost
reflexively to conflict with appeals to maintain "unity in Christ." What is
often meant is, "Don't disagree with me or with the majority." Such an approach
will hardly promote openness or diversity of viewpoint.

Janis's additional proposals may also prove useful. He suggests,
for example, that at every meeting a different group member be assigned the role
of devil's advocate, attacking premature consensus and challenging existing
ideas. And, whenever it is feasible, a policy-making group should hold a "second
chance" meeting before implementing any decision. At this special meeting every
member should be encouraged to become the devil's advocate. Everyone should
present to the group any objections he or she can think of that have not yet
been adequately discussed.

The church was established by God himself, and we as members of
the body of Christ must continue to look to the power and leading of his Spirit.
I am not suggesting that if Christians simply rely on their own capacity for
rational analysis and critical judgment, all will go well. What I am saying is
that the church, while divinely instituted, is also a human institution. What
applies to other human institutions applies to the church as well. God works
through the winds and actions of his people to accomplish his purposes. As God's
agents, we have the responsibility to apply fully the abilities he gives both in
learning his will for our lives and in furthering his kingdom.

Just as consensus in the church should not become an end in
itself, so we should not promote conflict for conflict's sake. We are to be
concerned with building a strong and vital church for the ministry of God's
kingdom.8Sharing some initial consensus is
necessary for a group to function or even exist. And reaching agreement on an
issue or problem is essential if the group is to be effective.

Sometimes, when resolving trivial issues or when time is of the
essence, conflict must be discouraged. There is a difference between conflict
that produces growth and conflict which simply delays action or destroys
relationships; we must be discerning in this. The solution, however, lies in
accepting and regulating conflict, not in eliminating it. Conflict as a regular
agent of decision making can free us from the trap of groupthink to provide
valid guidance for the church.

THE APOSTLE JOHN taught that
our relationships to God and to one another are inseparable: "If anyone says, 'I
love God,' but keeps on hating his brother, he is a liar; for if he doesn't love
his brother who is right there in front of him, how can he love God whom he has
never seen?" (1Jn 4:20 LB). Part I explored social thought, and Part II
examined certain aspects of social influence. Social psychology is also
concerned with how we relate to one another; so in Part III we consider social
relations.

Chapter ten introduces two social psychological principles to
explain why it is that yesterday's luxuries have a way of becoming today's
necessities, resulting in commiserating "poortalk." Fortunately, these
principles also suggest remedies which can enable us to be more satisfied with
our affluence and more sensitive to others' poverty.

What attracts us to another person? Chapter eleven shows how the
reward principle often leads us into friendship. Christ, however, presents us
with a more challenging and inspiring vision of love. He both models and calls
us to concern for another's welfare with no expectation of reward.

Jesus' classic illustration of altruism, the parable of the good
Samaritan, has provided the impetus for an interesting social psychological
experiment. Chapter twelve examines the study's findings, along with other
research on our willingness to help others.

Our concern for justice often moves us to help victims of
oppression. Chapter thirteen explores how the desire for a just world may foster
constructive social change, but may also ironically, serve to perpetuate
injustice.

Becoming aware of these tendencies is a necessary first step
toward creating Shalom. Chapter fourteen examines the biblical vision of
peacemaking. Identifying several sources of human conflict, it suggests some
principles of Christian peacemaking.

10

Why Do the Rich Feel So
Poor?

THE WESTERN INDUSTRIALIZED
nations have undergone an astonishing growth in prosperity since World War 2. In
the past three decades the average American's disposable in come has doubled.
But this unprecedented rapid growth in real income may now be ending, say some
economic prophets, or at least it ought not be allowed to continue. Skyrocketing
energy costs, diminishing supplies of nonrenewable resources and exploding
population have brought together an unlikely chorus of conservationists,
economists, politicians and scientists who warn that limited growth, zero growth
or even economic decline is in store for us.

Even if the doomsday visions do not materialize, we must still
cope with our fluctuating economy and its cycles of inflation and recession.
Many Americans today think that their economic condition is worsening. We
complain to one another that we can no longer afford things we used to buy
routinely. When bill-paying time comes, we bemoan the near-impossibility of
trying to make ends meet at today's prices. Aware of our economic anguish, a
presidential candidate routs the incumbent with a politically astute
question:

"Are you better off than you were four years ago?"

Ironically, the income data in figure 3 suggest that the average
American should have answered Ronald Reagan's question with a yes. Despite all
the "poortalk," the fact is that buying power had not diminished. Even if we
take into account increased taxes as well as inflation, real disposable income
for the average American rose dramatically between 1935 and 1976 and has risen
slightly since then.

Why All the Poortalk?

Why then do middle-class Americans not feel more
affluent? Why do yesterday's luxuries become today's necessities, leading most
people to feel that their needs are always slightly greater than their income?
And what trauma may we expect if the predicted limits to growth do in fact
materialize and we enter a slow-growth or no-growth era?

Several principles from psychological research can help us
understand the emotions that accompany economic fluctuations. These concepts
assist in explaining our insatiability, and they prompt us to consider
alternative routes to personal security and well-being.

The first principle is the adaptation-level phenomenon.
Although research on this topic is relatively recent, the idea dates back to the
Epicurean and Stoic philosophers. The basic point is that we use our past to
calibrate our present experience and to form expectations for the future.
Success and failure, satisfaction and dissatisfaction, are relative to our prior
experience. If our achievements rise above those expectations, we experience
success and satisfaction. If our achievements fall below the neutral point
defined by prior experience, we feel dissatisfied and frustrated.

Increased material goods, leisure time or social prestige
provides an initial surge of pleasure. Yet all too soon the feeling wanes.
Black-and-white television, once a thrill, begins to seem ordinary. Then we need
something better, a bigger "fix," to give us another surge of
pleasure.

This principle was also plainly evident in the high suicide rate
among people who lost their wealth during the depression. A temporary infusion
of wealth can leave one feeling worse than if it had never come. For this
reason, Christmas-basket charity may be counterproductive, making the recipient
family more acutely aware of its poverty the other 364 days a year while doing
nothing to relieve the impoverished state.

If, however, the improvements persist, we adapt to them. Our
experience is recalibrated so that what was formerly seen as positive is now
only neutral and what was formerly neutral becomes negative. Psychologists
Philip Brickman and Donald Campbell noted that this principle, well grounded in
research, predicts that humanity will never create a social paradise on
earth.1Once achieved, our utopia would soon be
subject to recalibration so that we would again sometimes feel pleasure,
sometimes feel deprived and sometimes feel neutral.

This is why, despite the increase in real income during the past
several decades, the average American today reports no greater feeling of
general happiness and satisfaction than was the case thirty years ago. In 1957,
for example, 35 per cent of the population reported themselves "very happy." By
1980, after two decades of growing affluence, how many declared themselves "very
happy"? Only 33 per cent. More over, surveys in rich and poor nations do not
reveal striking differences in self-reported happiness. Egyptians are as happy
as West Germans; Cubans are as happy as Americans. "Poverty," said Plato,
"consists not in the decrease of one's possessions but in the increase of one's
greed." Assuming that inequality of wealth persists, there is a real sense in
which we shall "always have the poor." The poor remain poor partly because the
criteria for poverty are continually redefined.

A recent study of state lottery winners illustrates the
adaptation-level principle.2Researchers at
Northwestern University found that people felt good about winning the lottery;
they typically said that it was one of the best things ever to happen to them.
Yet their reported happiness did not increase. In fact, everyday activities like
reading or eating breakfast became less pleasurable. It seemed that winning the
lottery was such a high point that life's ordinary pleasures paled by
comparison.

The dissatisfactions bred by adapting to affluence are
compounded when we compare ourselves with others. When climbing the ladder of
success, people look up, not down. They pay attention to where they are going,
usually neglecting where they have come from. Such upward comparison further
whets human appetites. Unfortunately, the ladder's rungs go on forever. So
unless we gain a broader perspective we will be forever comparing ourselves with
those above us. And doing so inevitably empowers a second principle,
relative deprivation.

The term relative deprivation was coined by researchers
studying levels of satisfaction of American World War 2 soldiers. Ironically,
those in the Air Corps, where promotions were rapid and widespread, were more
frustrated about their rate of promotion than were those in the Military Police,
for whom promotions were slow and unpredictable. In retrospect, we realize that
the Air Corps promotion rate was rapid and that, according to those principles
noted in chapter three, most Air Corps personnel probably perceived themselves
as better than the average Air Corps member. It's therefore likely that their
aspirations soared higher than their achievements. The result?
Frustration!

The self-serving bias can fuel feelings of relative deprivation.
When merit salary raises are awarded, at least half the employees will receive
only an average raise or less. Since few see themselves as average or below
average, many will feel that an injustice has been done. The shortest line of
all would be composed of those who feel they were overpaid.

People's impression that they have been unjustly evaluated does
not necessarily signify actual injustice. Even if God himself prescribed the
salary increases according to his most perfect justice, many would still be
upset - unless their self-perceptions distributed themselves in conformity with
the true distribution of employee excellence, which they surely would not. A
fixed-percentage or fixed-increment salary increase does not resolve the
problem. Many people may then feel that equal pay is, for them, inequitable,
since they are more competent and committed than most others.

The resentment that accompanies high inflation, even in times
when wage increases keep pace with prices, partly reflects the self-serving
bias. Economist George Katona observed that people tend to perceive their wage
increases as the reward for their talent and effort, and thus they see price
increases as cheating them of their rightful gains.

The relative deprivation principle has some intriguing
implications. For example, as a family or employee group increases in affluence
and social status, it elevates the comparison standards by which it evaluates
its own achievements. Paradoxically, this means that actual gains in income,
possessions or status may be offset by psychological losses stemming from the
change in comparison group. Liberation movements, by raising their adherents'
aspirations and expectations, may simultaneously stimulate increases in their
actual achievements and in their perceived relative deprivation. Becoming a
feminist is probably not initially going to alleviate a woman's frustration with
her lot in life. In the short run, at least, she is as likely to feel more
frustrated.

Psychologists have found no upper bounds for the rising
aspirations embodied in this principle. The ladder seems infinite. Unless we
renounce the climb, we will be forever comparing ourselves with others above us.
We are like rats on a hedonic treadmill, requiring an ever-increasing level of
income and social status just to feel "neutral."

How to Be Middle Class and Feel Rich

All this sounds a bit pessimistic. Is there any cause for
optimism? We can draw some consolation from the fact that the adaptation-level
principle works in both directions: If personal choice or economic pressures
drive us to adopt a simpler life, we will eventually adapt and recover life's
balance of happiness, discontent and neutrality. In the aftermath of the 1970's
gas price hikes, Americans managed to reduce their "need" for large,
gas-slurping cars. Even paraplegics, the blind and other severely handicapped
people generally adapt to their situation and eventually recover a normal or
near-normal level of life satisfaction.3Victims of
traumatic accidents would surely exchange places with those of us who are not
paralyzed, and most of us would be delighted to win a state lottery. Yet, after
a period of adjustment, none of these three groups departs appreciably from the
others in moment-to-moment happiness. Human beings have an enormous adaptive
capacity.

What more active steps can we take to stay up psychologically
even in a down economy? The adaptation-level and relative deprivation principles
offer several constructive implications for all, but especially for Christians
who wish like Paul to learn "godliness with contentment" (1 Tim 6:6
RSV).

First, we can use the spectacles of history to cure our
economic myopia. Most of us are chronically preoccupied with the short run
- with comparing our profits and salaries with last month's or last year's
figures, and agonizing over any ground we have lost. But when we lift our gaze
to the more distant past, we see that economic stagnation of the 1980s is but a
barely perceptible downward blip on almost five decades of rising affluence.
Perhaps taking a longer-run perspective, such as comparing the 1982 recession to
the 1930s' depression, can trigger greater satisfaction.

Second, we can recognize the relativity of happiness.
If we feel deprived, we can first analyze our present life satisfaction in light
of the adaptation-level principle, pinpointing recent changes in income or
status and evaluating how much effect each has had on our happiness. Most will
realize that past fluctuations in income, possessions or social status have had
only a transient impact on our satisfaction.

Perhaps that is why the Declaration of Independence specifies as
an inalienable right only the pursuit of happiness: our elation over an
achievement always fades into neutrality, only to be replaced by a new level of
striving. Just becoming aware of this fact can be a first step toward gaining
mastery over the adaptation-level phenomenon in our lives. Recognizing the
relativity of our perceived deprivation can similarly diminish our feelings of
actual deprivation. In short, realizing our past captivity to our appetites can
open us to a new perspective on life, such as Jesus taught in his Sermon on the
Mount: Happy are those who renounce selfish ambition. We will find abundant life
by losing our life, not by clutching at things. Simple living unclutters the
heart and makes room for those things that have ultimate value.

Epictetus, the Stoic philosopher-slave, urged likewise: "Seek
not that the things which happen should happen as you wish; but wish the things
which happen to be as they are, and you will have a tranquil flow of life." The
preacher of Ecclesiastes expressed a similar sentiment: "I have also learned why
people work so hard to succeed: it is because they envy the things their
neighbors have. But it is useless. It is like chasing the wind. They say that a
man would be a fool to fold his hands and let himself starve to death. Maybe so,
but it is better to have only a little, with peace of mind, than be busy all the
time with both hands, trying to catch the wind" (Eccles 4:4-6 TEV). This is not
to commend apathy and fatalism. Epictetus cautioned us to distinguish between
those things that are in our power and those that are not. If the source of our
perceived deprivation is subject to our control, then we should struggle
mightily to correct the problem. If, however, it lies outside our power, we
should accept our situation with calmness and equanimity.

Third, we can cut the "poortalk," that incessant
grousing about how we can't exist on our mere $20,000 incomes. Poor-talk by
relatively affluent people is objectionable on two counts. First, it is
insensitive to the truly impoverished, just as self-pitying "fat-talk" by a
slightly overweight person is insensitive to the truly obese, or "sick-talk" by
a reasonably healthy person is insensitive to the agonies of those seriously
ill. And, second, poortalk sours our thinking.

Social psychologists have repeatedly observed that what we say
influences what we think and feel. Thus one way for middle-class folk to gain a
healthier perspective on their situation is to cut the poortalk. "I need that,"
can become, "I want that." "I am underpaid," can become, "I spend more than I
make." And that most familiar middle-class statement, "I can't afford it," can
become, "I choose to spend my money on other things." This last example
acknowledges the fact that most of us could afford almost any reasonable item,
if we made it a top priority. The fact is, we have other priorities on which we
choose to spend our limited income. The choice is ours. "I can't afford it"
denies the choices we have made, reducing us to self-pitying victims.

Fourth, we can choose our comparison groups
intentionally. We can resist the tendency to measure ourselves against
those higher on the ladder of success and choose instead to compare ourselves
with those less fortunate. Earlier generations were taught to perform such
comparisons by way of "counting one's blessings." We can avoid settings in which
we are surrounded by other people's luxury and wealth. We can even go out of our
way to confront true poverty, to drown our relative deprivations in the sea of
absolute deprivation that exists for so many human beings. Discovering how
relatively small our problems are can make us more sensitive to real poverty,
enabling us better to see as Jesus sees. We can begin to appreciate the extent
to which some people's unmet needs - clean water, adequate nutrition, medical
care - are things we take for granted.

Even imagining others' misfortunes may trigger greater life
satisfaction. As Abraham Maslow noted, "All you have to do is to go to a
hospital and hear all the simple blessings that people never before realized
were blessings - being able to urinate, to sleep on your side, to be able to
swallow, to scratch an itch, etc. Could exercises in deprivation educate us
faster about all ourblessings?"4A
research team led by Marshall Dermer put a number of University of Wisconsin
Milwaukee women through some imaginative exercises in
deprivation.5After viewing vivid depictions of how
grim life was in Milwaukee in 1900, or after imagining and then writing about
various personal tragedies such as being burned and disfigured, the women
expressed a greater sense of satisfaction with the quality of their own
lives.

Finally, we can view life from the eternal perspective.
Christian faith encourages us with the good news that our struggles will not
endure forever. Authentic Christian hope is not built on a make-believe escape
from life's frustrations and agonies, but it does promise that evil, deprivation
and heartache are not the last word. At the end of his Chronicles of Narnia, C.
S. Lewis depicts heaven as the ultimate liberation from the relativity of
experience. Here creatures cannot feel deprived, depressed or anxious. There is
no adaptation-level trauma, for happiness is continually expanding. Here is "the
Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which
every chapter is better than the one before." This resurrection hope does not
eliminate the ups and downs of day-to-day life, but it does offer a liberating
cosmic perspective from which to view them. To paraphrase Ruben Alves, the
melody of the promised future enables us to dance even now. As a folk hymn of
the St. Louis Jesuits puts it:

Though the mountains may fall,

And the hills turn to dust,

Yet the love of the Lord will stand

As a shelter to all who will call on his name;

Sing the praise

And the glory of God.

Here on earth we will never completely escape the hedonic
treadmill. But by pausing to recall the deprivations of our more distant past,
by recognizing the relativity of happiness, by cutting our poortalk, by
consciously selecting our comparison groups and by viewing life from the
perspective of resurrection faith, we can begin to experience the radical
liberation of the psalmist: "The LORD is my shepherd; I have
everything I need" (Ps 23:1 TEV).

11

Liking and Loving

WHY DO WE LIKE SOME people
more than others? Do birds of a feather flock together, or do opposites attract?
Are old friends, like old shoes, the best, or does familiarity breed contempt?
Such questions are central to our social lives, for our likes and dislikes play
a vital role in whom we befriend and whom we marry, in where we choose to live
and even in what church we join. Let's look at what social psychologists have
learned about liking and loving and then see what this means for our
interpersonal relationships.

Is Beauty Only Skin-Deep?

Does physical attractiveness significantly affect how much we
like others? Most of us deny it. Oh, certainly, we would admit noticing how
others look. But a major impact on how we feel about a person? Hardly. We manage
to rise above the superficial. Beauty is, after all, only skin-deep.

When college students are asked, for example, about the
qualities which are important in their dating preferences, "looks" ranks near
the bottom. Physical appearance is secondary to "personality," "character" or
"sincerity." A host of social psychological studies reveal, nevertheless, that
physical appearance powerfully affects how we evaluate other
people.

One of the early studies looked at its role within dating
relationships. Students at the University of Minnesota were randomly matched by
computer for blind dates to a Welcome Week dance.1They had all been previously given a battery of personality and aptitude
tests. On the night of the blind date, the couples danced and talked for more
than two hours and then took a brief intermission to evaluate their dates. Which
factors determined whether they liked each other? Was it intelligence, maturity
or social skills? No, not at all. The one determinant of whether the guy liked
the gal was her looks (which had been rated by the researchers beforehand).
Likewise, gals liked handsome guys best.

While we might think that attractiveness influences only first
impressions, psychologists have discovered that physical attractiveness is
positively related to both frequency of dating and feelings of popularity. Even
more intriguing is the fact that we tend to marry others who are about as good
looking as we ourselves are. As James Dobson has pointed out, in the dating game
men soon learn that "if at first you don't succeed, try someone a little bit
homelier."

The importance of physical attractiveness is not limited to
dating relationships. For example, college students judged an essay to be of
higher quality when written by an attractive than an unattractive author.
Similarly, simulated juries conferred less guilt and punishment on physically
attractive defendants than on unattractive defendants. And in a recent study
Ralph Keyes found that the average salary of over 17,000 middle-aged men was
positively related to their height.2Since every
inch over 5' 3" was worth an extra $370 a year in salary, it appears that if you
walk tall you'll carry a fatter wallet

Most researchers are now convinced that a widespread physical
attractiveness stereotype exists: attractive people are assumed to possess a
variety of desirable qualities. When Karen Dion and her colleagues showed
college students photographs of other college-age people, the more attractive
were guessed to be happier, more intelligent, more sociable, more successful,
more competent.3

The stereotype extends to adults' evaluations of children. In
one study, for example, over four hundred fifth-grade teachers evaluated
attractive children as having greater intelligence and scholastic potential than
unattractive children. And as early as nursery school, children themselves are
responsive to the physical attractiveness of their peers. It has been suggested
that parents may implicitly teach the physical attractiveness stereotype through
the bedtime stories they read their children. Physical deformities and chronic
illness often symbolize inner defects. The villain in "Peter Pan," Captain Hook,
wore a prosthesis. Cinderella's mean stepsisters were ugly. Hansel and Gretel
were victims of an arthritic witch. Pinocchio's nose lengthened as his integrity
slipped.

The stories are too good not to tell. But perhaps in reading
them we should also use the occasion to teach our children that physical
appearance is not the yardstick for measuring character or worth. Reflecting on
contemporary fictional characters makes one wonder: May some of our children's
more recent heroes such as E.T. and the Cookie Monster, who are scary yet
lovable, serve to weaken the physical attractiveness stereotype? Certainly all
of us need to become more conscious of how often we use children's physical
appearance to evaluate them. "Mary, you look so nice! And isn't that a new
dress? My, you are an angel!" or, "Billy, just look at yourself! Your
hair's not combed, your plaid shirt and checkered pants don't match. What will
people think?" How much better to say, "Tim, how helpful you are!" or "Barbara,
you are a hard worker."

Does Familiarity Breed Contempt?

In 1972 the residents of a small coastal town in Ecuador were
faced with the question of what to do with their new mayor, Pulvapies. Pulvapies
had been elected fairly. In fact, he had defeated his closest opponent by a wide
margin. There was one problem, however: Pulvapies was a foot deodorant! During
the campaign the manufacturer had plastered billboards and distributed brochures
with the words "FOR MAYOR: HONORABLE PULVAPIES." The manufacturer never dreamed
the well-publicized foot deodorant would be elected.

The election illustrates a result of recent studies: quite
contrary to the old proverb about familiarity breeding contempt, familiarity
breeds fondness. Mere repeated exposure to all sorts of novel stimuli - nonsense
syllables, Chinese characters, faces - boosts people's ratings of such stimuli.
For example, Robert Zajonc found that when he presented the unfamiliar word
dilikli to American subjects, they usually said it meant something
unfavorable.4However, the more the word was
presented, the more inclined subjects were to attribute a favorable meaning to
it.

Familiarity through exposure also increases the attractiveness
of people. Some years ago a mysterious student attended a speech class at Oregon
State University enveloped in a big black bag. Only his bare feet showed. The
instructor, who alone knew the bag's contents, reported that the attitudes of
other class members slowly changed from hostility to curiosity and finally to
friendship. Similarly, Canadian preschoolers who had watched two brief Sesame
Street excerpts featuring North American Indians and Japanese Canadians were
more likely than children not exposed to express a desire to play with such
children. Other things being equal, the more times people see a stranger, the
more the stranger is liked.

This exposure effect may account for the intriguing finding that
apartment dwellers are more likely to become friends with their next-door
neighbors than with those just two doors away. It may also explain why
instructors' classroom seating charts can determine friendship patterns rather
dramatically. Interestingly enough, sociologists have long noted that geographic
proximity reliably predicts our choice of marriage partners. There is some truth
in the old adage that somewhere in this world there is one true love just for
you - and the chances are that he or she lives only a few blocks
away.

Do Birds of a Feather Flock Together?

Birds of a feather do flock together. In fact, few findings in
social psychology have been confirmed with such regularity. Friends, engaged
couples and spouses are very likely to share common attitudes, values and even
personality styles. Among married couples, the greater the similarity between
husband and wife, the more likely they are to be happily married and the less
likely they are to divorce. William Griffitt and Russell Veitch confined
thirteen unacquainted men in a fallout shelter for a ten-day
period.5From knowledge of their prior attitudes the
researchers were roughly able to predict the patterns of liking among the men
during their time together.

The attracting power of shared attitudes, interests and values
is also the power that drives a wedge between people who are dissimilar. Not
only do we find those with dissimilar attitudes and values to be unlikable, we
also tend to judge them as unintelligent, ignorant, immoral and even
maladjusted. Indeed, the editorial columns in our newspapers frequently
illustrate that proponents of one side of an issue often suspect the sanity of
those taking a position different from their own.

Interpersonal similarity can influence our treatment of others
in important ways in a variety of settings. In an experimental court case
involving negligent homicide, a defendant whose attitudes were dissimilar to
those of the jurors was assigned a full two years more in prison than a
defendant with attitudes similar to jurors. Studies have also shown that we are
more likely to believe a witness, we are more likely to judge a husband and wife
as suitable adoptive parents, we are more likely to approve someone's bank-loan
application, and we are more likely to hire an applicant for a job if these
persons' opinions are similar to our own. Even our judgments of another's job
performance are likely to be more positive when the other's values and beliefs
are perceived to be similar to our own.

To Have a Friend, Be a Friend?

Most of us have at some time been told that another person likes
us. Our immediate response? A warm feeling of reciprocal affection. The notion
that we like those who like us is hardly new. The ancient philosopher Hecato
suggested, "If you wish to be loved, love." Ralph Waldo Emerson gave similar
advice: "The only way to have a friend is to be a friend."

Studies confirm that being liked does make the heart grow
fonder. James Dittes and Harold Kelley led student participants in small
discussion groups to believe that their fellow group members either liked or
disliked them.6Those led to believe they were liked
were more attracted to the groups than those who believed they were disliked.
Ellen Berscheid and her colleagues even found that University of Minnesota
students liked a fellow student who said eight positive things about them more
than one who said seven things positive and one negative.7Apparently we are very sensitive to the slightest criticism received from
others.

Evidence indicates that the greater our insecurity and
self-doubt, the fonder we will grow of the person who likes us. Elaine Walster
provided Stanford University women with either favorable or unfavorable analyses
of their social sensitivity, thus offering an affirming boost to some while
temporarily wounding the self-esteem of others.8Each was then asked to evaluate several people including an attractive
male accomplice who just before the experiment had struck up a warm conversation
and asked for a date. Which women most liked the man? Those whose self-esteem
had been temporarily shattered and who were presumably hungry for social
acceptance. Apparently approval after disapproval can be powerfully
rewarding.

The Reward Principle

Many psychologists as well as philosophers and theologians
believe we are naturally attracted to what rewards us. In other words, we like
to be with and befriend people whose words, actions or mere presence brings us
pleasure and satisfies our needs. We prefer to avoid those who make us feel
uneasy, distressed, or who outright punish us.

So the aesthetic delight of physical beauty is likely to attract
us to the lovely; those who are fat or pale, deformed or disfigured, however,
repel us somewhat. Strangers are likely to elicit feelings of apprehension and
uncertainty; those familiar to us bring comfort and security. Those who share
our own opinions bolster our feelings of competence; those who disagree with us
raise the unpleasant possibility that we ourselves are to some degree stupid or
misinformed. Those who like us assure us of our value; those who don't challenge
our worth. Lewis Smedes has observed that even our most important relationships
contain the expectation that the other person will meet a need or provide some
reward.9Romantic love may involve self-giving, but
it always expects the other to provide a return on the investment. Similarly,
friendships is born of the need for someone to be there with us, to support us,
to trust and care for us. Even our love for God, says Smedes, is based on the
fact that he promises to fill our soul's potential.

Does such "need-love," as C. S. Lewis describes it, have any
legitimate place in the Christian's life? Isn't it merely poorly disguised
selfishness? A reflection of immaturity at best?

One of Scripture's first lessons is that by ourselves we are
incomplete. "It is not good that the man should be alone" (Gen 2:18 RSV). We
need others to fill the emptiness within us. We are created social, not
self-sufficient. "We are born helpless," observes C. S. Lewis. "As soon as we
are fully conscious we discover loneliness. We need others physically,
emotionally, intellectually; we need them to know anything, even
ourselves."10The Bible does not denigrate need-love
but, on the contrary, affirms it as natural and God-given.

Romantic attachments, brotherly affection and intimate
friendships are the grist for the Old Testament's most memorable stories. Jacob
labors a second seven years to win the hand of Rachel; Joseph holds Simeon
ransom for a reunion with Benjamin; Jonathan risks his father's wrath and his
own life in devotion to David. And what factors were important in the formation
and maintenance of those close personal relationships? Physical beauty,
similarity and mutual affection.

Rachel's physical beauty captures Jacob's attention: "Leah had
weak eyes, but Rachel was lovely in form, and beautiful. Jacob was in love with
Rachel" (Gen 29:17-18 NIV). Joseph and Benjamin shared the same mother:
"[He] saw his brother Benjamin, his own mother's son.... Deeply moved at the
sight of his brother, Joseph hurried out and looked for a place to weep" (Gen
43:29-30 NIV). And Jonathan sought reassurance of reciprocal love: " 'But show
me unfailing kindness... so that I may not be killed....' And Jonathan had David
reaffirm his oath out of love for him" (1 Sam 20:14,17 NIV).

The relationships that emerge from natural love in the Old
Testament are often beautiful; they strengthen rather than debilitate, sustain
rather than destroy. Love for Rebekah supports Isaac in the moment of his
mother's death. More than once Jonathan's friendship saves David's life. And
through her attachment to Naomi, Ruth becomes a part of redemptive
history.

Friendship was also a significant part of Christ's life. In the
intimacy he enjoys with Mary, Martha and Lazarus, Christ further affirms the
value of friendship and provides evidence of his true humanity. The three at
Bethany occupy an important place in his life. Informed of Lazarus' death, he
says to his disciples, "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going
there to wake him up" (Jn 11:11 NIV). And, arriving at the grave of his friend,
Jesus is deeply moved; he weeps. The Bethany townsfolk recognize the special
relationship: "See how he loved him!" (v. 36).

In beginning his ministry, Jesus calls twelve men to be his
close companions. From this band he selected an even more intimate circle to
share his moment of earthly glory and to support him in his hour of greatest
suffering. Jesus' love for all did not prevent him from having a unique
relationship with one from within that tiny circle. Time and again we are
reminded of a disciple whom, in a special sense, Jesus "loved."

Beyond the Pleasure Principle

There's no question about it. Ourpersonal needs and
satisfactions often lead us into a rich friendship and communion with others.
Yet clearly Christ presents us with an even more challenging and inspiring
vision of love. When we understand love in the light of the cross, we understand
that love is to be shown to the unlovely, to the unworthy and to those who have
nothing to offer in return. Christ is the incarnation of a love that is
self-denying rather than self-seeking, that strives to give rather than to get,
that seeks to fulfill rather than be fulfilled. The command to love as Christ
loves is a call to active concern for others without demand for reward. This
demands that we transcend our natural inclination to love only those who are
rewarding, that we love even those who are unattractive, unfamiliar, dissimilar
and unfriendly. In order to transcend our natural ways and love as Christ loves,
we need the empowering of the Spirit, whose fruit in our lives is love (Gal
5:22).

Our Lord rejected love based merely on reciprocated affections.
"What credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' love those who love them,... do good
to those who are good to [them], ... and... lend to those from whom [they]
expect repayment" (Lk 6:32-34 NIV). Being a follower of Jesus means much more.
In fact, Jesus turns the principle of reciprocity upside down: "Love your
enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for
those who mistreat you" (Lk 6:27-28 NIV). We are to turn the other cheek to
those who assault us and lend to our enemies without expecting to get anything
back. Jesus calls us to be sons and daughters of the Most High who "is kind to
the ungrateful and wicked" (Lk 6:35 NIV). If there is anything that sets God's
love apart from our natural inclinations, it is his capacity to love the
unloving.

We have seen how we naturally migrate toward those who are
familiar and similar. And that is not to be condemned. In chapter eight we
argued that developing and maintaining a Christian lifestyle demand seeking out
those who share similar values and thereby recapturing the fellowship of the
early church described as a "circle of friends." This emphasis on communal
support, however, is not a call to withdraw from the world. The church is not
first of all a therapy group. Nor is it a social club. The community exists not
simply to serve the people within, but to serve and to minister to those not yet
a part. The call had already come to the Old Testament community: "Love the
stranger." And in the New Testament believers are admonished, "Do good to all
men" (Gal 6:10 RSV).

How difficult God's people have found that command! While the
promise given Abraham was clearly intended to benefit all nations, this vision
was lost by New Testament times.11Jesus reminds his
hometown residents, members of the Nazareth synagogue, that there were many
hungry Israelite widows in Elijah's time, but to whom was he sent? To a Gentile
in Sidon. There were many lepers in Israel in Elisha's day. But whom did he
cure? Naaman, a foreigner. How does the crowd react to Jesus' history lesson?
They try to shove him over a cliff.

Time and again Jesus loves the stranger. Whom does he heal? A
Syrophoenician woman's daughter, a Gerasene demoniac and the daughter of a Roman
centurion. To whom does he first reveal himself as the Messiah? A despised
Samaritan adulteress. With whom does he share supper? Zacchaeus, an outcast tax
collector. The lesson that God's love extends to all could not have been more
vivid, more dramatic. Yet even Peter needed a reminder. Coming to him in a
vision, God teaches Peter that no one is unclean (Acts 10:9- 16). God's love
comes to foreigners as well as to the children of Abraham.

As Christians we are also called to transcend the pull of
physical attractiveness. Our natural but inappropriate tendency to judge others
on the basis of their appearance is highlighted in an interesting Old Testament
account. Thoroughly exasperated with the disobedient Saul, God tells Samuel to
anoint a new king over Israel. That new monarch is to come from the house of
Jesse. Rightly fearing Saul, Samuel reluctantly follows God's instructions and
goes to Bethlehem, saying he wants to offer a sacrifice. Although the old
prophet is undoubtedly eager to complete his assignment as quickly and as
unobtrusively as possible, God draws out the ceremony and uses the occasion to
teach both Samuel and us a lesson in "seeing" (1 Sam 16:1-13).

Having called Jesse's family to the sacrifice, Samuel
immediately sizes up the sons. Noting the splendid physical appearance
(particularly the height of Eliab, Jesse's eldest son, Samuel anticipates God's
pick. But, no, God tells Samuel, "He's not the one." He continues, "I don't look
at people the way you do: I see differently. You look at physical appearance but
I look at the heart." So Jesse presents his seven oldest sons to Samuel, but God
tells Samuel that he has chosen none of these. Finally, they fetch the least
likely candidate, the youngest son, David, who was out keeping the
sheep.

Loving others the way God does is not easy; by nature we are
primarily motivated to satisfy our own needs. What then disposes us to pray for
our enemies and forgive those who despise us? What disposes us to reach out to
the ugly and disagreeable, to befriend the stranger, to approach and nurture
those who evoke our natural repulsion? What prompts us at times to be more
concerned about loving than being loved? What drives us to help others who can
never return our love - or even know it was we who helped them? The power to
practice such love is the power of God himself working in us. As Lewis Smedes
notes, "If we have even a fleeting impulse to forget our own self-interest and
act solely for another, with no regard for any reward, we are in touch with the
core of cosmic reality."12

12

And Who Is My
Neighbor?

ONE OF THE MOST memorable
pictures Scripture gives of love that is self-denying rather than self-seeking
is Jesus' parable of the good Samaritan. When Jesus was asked, "And who is my
neighbor?" he told the story of how, after a priest and a Levite passed by a man
who lay beaten and robbed on the road to Jericho, a despised Samaritan showed
compassion (Lk 10:29-37). By offering his time and money, at great personal cost
and contrary to social mores, the Samaritan exemplified the sort of altruism
studied by social psychologists. In fact, the parable itself provided the direct
impetus for an experiment.

Too Busy to Help?

Reflecting on the parable, psychologists John Darley and Daniel
Batson speculated about the possible differences between the unhelpful priest
and Levite and the helpful Samaritan.1Why didn't
the first two stop and help? The priest and Levite were prominent public figures
who were perhaps hurrying to their appointments while glancing furtively at
their sundials. The lowly Samaritan was probably in much less of a hurry. He no
doubt had far fewer and less important people counting on him to be at a
particular place at a particular time. To see if "good" people in a hurry do
indeed act as the priest and Levite did, Darley and Batson recreated the
situation described in the parable.

After being asked to deliver a brief talk, which for half the
participants was actually on the good Samaritan parable, Princeton Seminary
students were directed to a recording studio in another building. While in
transit, each passed a victim slumped in the alley, head down, eyes closed,
coughing and groaning. Some of the students had been sent off knowing they had
plenty of time: "It'll be a few minutes before they're ready for you. If you
have to wait over there, it shouldn't be long." Of these, most stopped to offer
aid. Others, however, had been told, "You're late. They were expecting you a few
minutes ago so you'd better hurry." Of these only 10 per cent offered help.
Conclusion? Hurried people are likely to pass by someone in distress, even if
they are hurrying to speak on the parable of the good Samaritan.

The difference in helping between the two groups of seminarians
is clearly not due to callousness. It can only be explained in terms of
differences in time pressure. One group was in a hurry; the other was not. Of
those seminarians in a rush, a few did not even see the victim. Most noticed,
however, and went on by. But they did not consciously choose to ignore the
victim's distress. Rather, because they were in a hurry, they simply passed by
without thinking about it. Their minds were on the speech they were to make. A
few seminarians were aroused and anxious after the encounter in the alley. They
realized the man's plight but also felt committed to helping the experimenter.
In genuine conflict they hurried on because of their devotion to
duty.

Busyness can be an obstacle to helping others. The pressures of
daily living - of getting to class or work on time, of making that next
appointment, of preparing for that next test, of completing that paper - may
prevent us from noticing or pausing to reflect on the needs of those around us
and how we might help. While I was outlining this chapter one fall Saturday
afternoon, my wife suggested that we visit a neighbor suffering from multiple
sclerosis, now hospitalized. Ironically the words almost fell out: "Not today.
I'm too busy writing 'Who Is My Neighbor?' "

We are people in a hurry. We have jobs to do. We intend to do
them well and want to be uninterrupted. The home work must get done, the
checkbook must be balanced, the floors waxed, the letters written, the lawn
mowed. We perform our duties and "pass by on the other side."

Note that our problem is not necessarily selfishness. The
seminarians in Darley and Batson's study were not rushing to play cards in the
student union. They were on their way to retell the parable of the good
Samaritan! Nor were the priest and Levite likely hurrying to Jerusalem for the
premier showing of Rocky IVor the annual synagogue picnic. They
were possibly headed for the Temple - perhaps to chair a meeting of the
Subcommittee to Improve Jewish-Samaritan Relations? Or was it to kick off the
Tenth Annual Drive to Repair the Jericho Road?

Even within the church we maintain a frenzied pace. We have
committee and council meetings to attend, lessons to be taught, programs to be
kept running, sermons to be preached. Sometimes the result is that we don't see
others around us clearly, even our own parents, mate or children. Other times we
don't fully recognize the choices we make with our time, effort and talent. Most
often the obstacle to compassion is not callousness; rather, like Martha
preparing dinner, we get preoccupied with the task at hand, fulfillment of
obligation, devotion to duty. Indeed, Luke puts Jesus' lesson to Martha on
choosing the better part right after the lesson of the good Samaritan. Don't
interrupt us - we want to be seen as good committee persons, hard-working
elders, deacons and Sunday-school teachers, effective ministers. Our calendars
are filled, our watch alarms set.

A hallmark of Christ's ministry was his willingness to be
interrupted. When the crowd tells Bartimaeus to hush, Jesus stops, hears the
blind beggar's request and heals. When the disciples protect Jesus from the
onslaught of children, he beckons them closer, embracing them. Jairus interrupts
his preaching to ask him to come heal his daughter, and Jesus follows. Traveling
from Judea to Galilee, he hears the Samaritans' request to stay and remains two
full days.

Busyness may be one obstacle to altruism. But that certainly was
not the only lesson Jesus intended to teach in relating the story of the good
Samaritan. Was he teaching that love is a norm, a principle by which we all
should live? The lawyer who asks "Who is my neighbor?" already knows that love
is a duty. In fact, he has just recited the law "Love God and your neighbor as
yourself." The lawyer, the priest and the Levite already knew and professed
verbally the law or norm of love. So do we.

The parable is clearly one of contrasting behaviors, not
ideologies. Jesus teaches that professing love is not enough; it must find
expression in action. The Samaritan's action made him neighborly; Jesus says,
"Go and do likewise." Unfortunately, our professed standards often have little
impact on our actions. Although religious individuals think and say they are
more responsive to the needs of others, measures of their behavior
typically fail to support the claim.2Why?
Perhaps we just need frequent reminders? Darley and Batson wondered if those who
thought about the altruistic norms of the good Samaritan parable might be more
likely to help than those who were thinking about job opportunities for seminary
students. So some were assigned to preach on the good Samaritan and some were
not. But those in the first group helped only slightly more frequently than
those in the second.3

Compassion and Helping

A careful reading of the parable reveals something else: the
perceptions and feelings of the priest and the Levite contrast sharply with the
Samaritan's. The first two do not see the victim as a neighbor, and thus they
pass by on the other side. The Samaritan perceives him as neighbor, experiences
compassion and helps. The Samaritan has empathy; the priest and Levite do
not.

Seeing a person in distress is emotionally disturbing to most
people. Such emotional turmoil was demonstrated some years ago in a series of
studies by Ezra Stotland.4An accomplice of the
investigator pretended to experience pain while taking part in an experiment.
Observers' blood pressure, heart rate and perspiration were measured while they
watched the victim. When he showed signs of pain, the observers tensed and
perspired. Studies showed that even infants evidence such reactions to others'
distress; for example, newborns cry in response to the sound of another infant's
cry - no mere echo either, but a vigorous, intense, spontaneous cry. Some
psychologists have concluded that the capacity for empathy may be
inherent.

Research indicates that empathy, the ability to imagine oneself
in the place of others, promotes positive social action. In one recent
experiment college students were asked to imagine that a friend was terminally
ill, and they were instructed either to think about the dying friend's feelings
or to reflect on their own reaction to the illness.5Later, when asked to do an anonymous favor for someone, those who had
focused on their friend's feelings were much more likely to do the favor than
those whose thoughts had been focused on themselves.

Other studies have also indicated that seeing or hearing "with
feeling" leads to helping. Female students heard an accomplice scream that a
stack of chairs was falling on her.6The greater a
student's change in heart rate, the more quickly she intervened. Moreover, the
physiological arousal preceded and did not merely accompany helping.

The film series Roots and Holocaust probably triggered more
empathy for Black and Jewish suffering than any documentaries on slavery or the
concentration camps. Each film took viewers into the experience of specific
people with whom they could identify, who had thoughts, motives and feelings
like their own. Inside someone else's skin, our perceptions change. A
hunger-awareness dinner or day of fasting may alter attitudes and actions more
effectively than a month of sermons. Taking adolescents into a nursing home to
eat lunch with the elderly may generate more compassion than five Sunday-school
lessons on the fifth commandment.

Neal Plantinga distinguishes compassion from mere
sentimentality: "It is a knowing pity, a penetrating pity, a pity that has real
understanding, an insight into the situation of another." Moreover, it can be
fostered through alert, focused seeing. You deliberately identify with others.
You deliberately expose yourself, deliberately inform yourself about the lives
of others. He writes, "You try, you struggle, you make yourself see life from
another's point of view. What is it to be married as loosely and trivially as
she is? What does it feel like to know others are more popular than you? What is
it in another that makes him or her feel obliged to impress you? You need to get
far enough in another to understand, to experience with, suffer with
another."7

Christ himself provides the model. As the Immanuel, or "God with
us," he entered our lives to share our sorrow and pain. Throughout the Gospels,
Christ is pictured as one who identifies with those in specific need. "Filled
with compassion," Jesus heals the leper. And when he sees the widow at Nain, he
is "moved with compassion" and raises her son. When the blind men ask for their
sight, Jesus "had compassion on them" and touched their eyes. The compassion he
shows us and the model he provides ought to encourage us to feel the pain of
another, and to be moved to relieve it.

Seeing Similarities, Not Differences

Empathy seems to be facilitated by our perceiving another human
as like us. As we saw in the last chapter, similarity produces bonds; the
perception of differences creates barriers. In the Stotland empathy studies,
observers responded more empathetically if they were led to believe the victim
was similar to themselves. The perception of similarity seemed to heighten the
subjects' sensitivity to the reaction of the other person and to make it easier
for them to imagine they were in his or her place.

Compassion is rooted in a sense of human solidarity, in an
awareness that we are all made of the same basic stuff. But that perception does
not come easily. In fact, we generally define ourselves in terms of our
differences, not our similarities. We attach greater value to our
distinctiveness than our sameness. In response to the question "Who am I?"
people are likely to mention their birthplace if they are foreigners, their
ethnic membership when part of a minority, their hair color if red, and their
sex when outnumbered by the other sex within their family. The church I attend
is proud of its reputation as "an alternative" church. The college where I teach
emphasizes its "distinctiveness" in attempting to recruit new students. Who are
we, after all, if we can't point to something special, something distinctive,
something that sets us apart from everyone else?

The experience of empathy, Harvey Hornstein observes, is closely
tied to the human readiness to form bonds of we and barriers of
they.8The most insignificant difference
can prove to be the basis for organizing the world into a "we" and a "they." For
example, Henri Tajfel and his colleagues created two groups in the laboratory by
informing individuals that they tended to either underestimate or overestimate
the number of dots flashed on a screen.9In a later
task, each subject was asked to decide how a sum of money should be divided
between two of his fellow subjects. The only information provided the subject
about the recipient of the money was whether he was an overestimator or an
underestimator. This trivial difference proved important in how subjects
distributed the money: they tended to discriminate in favor of those similar to
themselves and against those who were dissimilar.

Even within the Christian community the danger of dividing
people into "we" and "they" is always present. Milton Rokeach laments,
"Throughout history man inspired by religious motives has indeed espoused noble
and humanitarian ideals and often behaved accordingly. But he has also committed
some of the most terrible crimes and wars in the holy name of religion - the
massacre of St. Bartholomew's, the crusades, the inquisition, Pogroms, and the
burning of witches and heretics."10In explaining
this "fundamental paradox" of religion, Rokeach argues that the church is
simultaneously confronted with the tasks of teaching mutual love and respect,
and perpetuating and defending itself against outside attack. In defending
itself, distinctions between we and they become inevitable.

Fortunately, the spirit of authentic Christianity is one that
recognizes the lesson of Christ's parable of the good Samaritan. Brotherly love
is preached for those who are not biological kin. The very first pages of
Scripture teach that God breathed his own breath into humankind, thus giving us
a part of himself, making us the bearer of his own spirit and image. God's
imprint on us demands that we look beyond another's race, nationality or sex,
beyond another's achievement or failure. This is what marks us all as brothers
and sisters, and provides the basis for our responding to one another in love.
John Calvin writes that we have no reason to refuse a stranger who needs our aid
because "the Lord shows him to be one to whom he has deigned to give the beauty
of his own image." Clearly, a common Father unites us into one
family.

Concern for the Feelings of Those We Help

Empathy helps us translate God's command of love into action.
But it is important for another reason as well. If we just adhere legalistically
to the law of love without feeling any true compassion, we end up focused on
ourselves rather than on others. Helping becomes a response to a rule or to our
own need to love rather than to others' needs. One result is that the aid given
may be inappropriate. Empathetic helping responds to another's situation,
another's suffering. It recognizes the effects aid has on the recipient.
Compassionate Christians not only help but are sensitive to the effect aid has
on recipients.

We often become insensitive to others' wishes, for example,
whether they want to be helped at all or how they feel they can best be helped.
Even in our helping we can treat people as objects! In the good Samaritan study,
Darley and Batson examined not only whether people stopped to help but also the
nature of the help they offered. Of those who stopped to assist the victim, some
seemed to ignore his repeated statement that he was really quite all right, that
he just needed to rest a few moments, that he preferred to be left alone. Others
seemed to be more responsive to the victim's wishes. Of special interest was the
finding that those who professed to be most religiously devout were those least
responsive to the victim's desires. A more recent study reproduced this finding,
reporting that the religiously devout were as likely to offer help when it was
not wanted as when it was.11

Being a recipient of help can be a mixed blessing. Accepting a
gift can damage dignity. Aid brings with it psychological costs, and many
impoverished people may avoid seeking help to preserve a sense of self-esteem.
In the request for aid often lies the admission that one is dependent and that
the donor is superior.

Aid that is given out of a need to be helpful may be aid that
seeks to keep others dependent. Only if others continue to need my help can I
see myself as a strong, capable, loving person. Perhaps this explains why within
the church we sometimes seem to want to do things for people rather than with
them. William T. Cunningham, founder of Focus: Hope, an interracial organization
that seeks to address problems of racism and poverty, has been critical of the
church's attempt to deal with such issues. His complaint is not about the
failure of the church to help, but about how the church has sought to
help. "There is a strange thing pervading church leadership," he says. "It's the
attitude that if I make the man equal, I'll be less. So instead I'll take care
of him."12

C. S. Lewis has also observed how our need to help may lead us
to keep others dependent. "The ravenous need to be needed," he writes, "will
gratify itself either by keeping its objects needy or by inventing for them
imaginary needs."13The aim of our giving, argued
Lewis, should be to put the recipient in a state where he no longer needs our
gift.

Have you ever received an unexpected Christmas present and had
nothing to give in return? Or received a far more expensive gift than you gave?
It can be most embarrassing. Giving others help they can't reciprocate may even
threaten relationships. It makes them feel awkward. It creates unpleasant
feelings of obligation. Under some conditions people may prefer a loan to an
outright gift. While we must love with Christ's love, not motivated by the
expectation of a return on our investment, we must also be willing to
accept something back if it helps the recipient preserve his or her
dignity.

Donald Kraybill suggests another way to preserve self-esteem:
"When someone gives to me and says, I don't want anything back - just pass it on
to someone else when you can, it releases me from indebtedness to the giver and
still protects my self-dignity since I can reciprocate in due time to someone
else. Suggesting that they pass the kindness on to someone else when they can
allows them to share in the redeeming
process."14

The parable of the good Samaritan is clearly a call to
compassionate action. Obedience requires that we transcend our
self-centeredness, even our busyness as we perform daily (and good) tasks.
Compassion is to be practiced unconditionally. Anyone in need is my neighbor and
my brother. Jesus makes it clear: We will be judged by how we have responded to
the sick, hungry, thirsty, naked, the stranger and the prisoner. "I tell you the
truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did
for me" (Mt 25:40 NIV).

13

Do Bad Things Really Happen
to Good People?

COMPASSION IS NOT always
our first response to suffering people, even to victims of gross injustice. When
the British marched a group of German civilians around the Belsen concentration
camp at the close of World War 2, one German is reported to have observed, "What
terrible criminals these prisoners must have been to receive such treatment."
Many of us have a similar tendency to believe that the world is a just place in
which people not only get what they deserve but deserve what they
get.

Social psychologist Melvin Lerner has found that most of us need
to believe that "I am a just person living in a just
world."1From early childhood, argues Lerner, we are
taught that good is rewarded and evil is punished. Success comes to those who do
what's right, and suffering to those who don't. Hard work will pay off; laziness
will not. Belief in a just world is, of course, an important force for social
stability. The consequences of children and adults' believing in a world where
wicked people are rewarded and innocent people punished would be
disastrous.

According to Lerner, people do care about justice for others as
well as for themselves. This concern may, under certain circumstances, motivate
people to help each other and to seek to remedy or to eliminate what they
perceive as injustice. However, the desire for a just world may also, rather
ironically, serve to perpetuate injustice. We may come to think that those who
are rewarded must be good and that those who are punished must be
wicked.

Blaming the Victim

One implication of believing "I am a just person in a just
world" is that those who inflict suffering on others will begin to value their
victims less. People not only hurt those they hate, but they come to hate those
they hurt. In effect, the aggressor justifies his or her action by derogating
the injured party. We can continue to see ourselves as just if our victims
deserved what happened to them, either because they brought it on themselves or
because they are despicable persons. Thus Hitler viewed Jews as "unfit" and
portrayed them as the cause of Germany's problems. American military men viewed
Vietnamese as less than human and considered killing a civilian equivalent to
killing a water buffalo.

Innocent bystanders observing injustice also tend to conclude
that victims deserve their fate. The reaction of the German citizen to the Nazi
concentration camp confirms this. If in the minds of the German people those
seized and executed by the Nazis were innocent, then it would follow that the
German government was cruelly unjust. To maintain their sense of justice, some
Germans apparently convinced themselves that those sent to the concentration
camps really deserved the treatment they received. Closer to home, the killing
of four students from Kent State University by members of the Ohio National
Guard in 1970 was quickly followed by the rumor that the bodies of all four
students were covered with lice and that they were suffering from syphilis so
far advanced they would have been dead in two weeks anyway.

Psychological studies have also demonstrated that the need to
believe in a just world can lead observers to disparage innocent victims. The
results of these studies throw light on why we permit social injustice to
continue. Imagine you are participating along with some other subjects in a
study on the perception of emotional cues.2By what
appears random choice, one of the participants, an accomplice of the
experimenter, is selected to perform a memory task. She is to receive painful
shocks for any error made, while you and the other participants observe and note
her emotional response. After watching her receive a number of painful shocks
and react with what seems to be great pain, you are asked to evaluate her along
several dimensions. How do you think you will respond? With compassion and
sympathy? This is what one might legitimately expect. The results indicated,
however, that when observers were powerless to alter the victim's fate, they
tended to reject and devalue her.

Studies using a variety of situations have demonstrated that
observers find a correspondence between what happens to people and what they
deserve. When portrayed in the experimental setting, even victims of murder,
accident and natural disaster are viewed as in some way responsible for their
fate. And, interestingly, the converse is also true. Success is taken as an
indication of virtue. In one study an employee was given a large bonus as the
result of a random drawing. When informed of this, his coworkers nonetheless
concluded that he had worked especially
hard.3

Individual Differences

Some people, of course, believe "I am a just person living in a
just world" more than others. A relatively simple paper-and-pencil test has been
used to assess this.4Tests also show that those who
believe it more strongly are more likely to see victims as meriting their
misfortune or "asking for trouble." Prior to the 1971 national draft lottery,
groups of nineteen year-olds completed the Just World Scale. After listening to
the radio broadcast of the lottery results, they rated their fellow group
members along several dimensions. Many of them expressed greater sympathy and
liking for those picked by the lottery than for those passed over. As the
investigators point out, this "vote of sympathy" is not too surprising since the
subjects themselves were in the lottery and in many cases also victimized. The
reaction of subjects scoring highest on the Just World Scale, however, ran
counter to this pattern. That is, they resented the men selected more than the
unselected, regardless of their own fate in the lottery.

Does God Let Bad Things Happen to Good People?

This research is also relevant for Christians. Zick Rubin and
Letitia Peplau found that both church attendance and belief in a personal God
were strongly correlated with just-world thinking.5
The inconsistency between our professed concern for social justice and our
actual conduct may be due to our belief in a just world.

But consider how the Bible actually presents a modified view of
such thinking. In a test of Job's faith God permits Satan to inflict terrible
suffering on him. He loses his possessions, his children and finally his health.
Job's friends, including Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar, come to comfort him. How do
they react to his suffering? All three perceive the world as a just place where
people get what they deserve and, conversely, deserve what they get. "Cheer up,
Job, nobody ever gets anything he doesn't have coming to him." Why? Because God
blesses the righteous and punishes the wicked. Eliphaz asks Job, "Have you ever
known a truly good and innocent person who was punished?" (Job 4:7 LB). In a
similar way Bildad says, "God will not cast away a good man, nor prosper
evildoers" (Job 8:20 LB). Job's friends can only conclude that his suffering is
a result of his sin and try to persuade him to repent.

In the New Testament Jesus' disciples reflect the same attitude
toward the man blind from birth. They inquire, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or
his parents, that he was born blind?" (Jn 9:2 NIV). In his response Jesus
clearly disallows such just-world thinking. In the first verses of Luke 13, he
again rejects the notion that the suffering of the Galileans or the death of
those in the collapse of the tower in Siloam was due to their personal
sin.

One reason why Christians may seem indifferent to social
injustice is that they see no injustice. As Scripture itself illustrates, belief
in a just world can proceed from, and be supported by, belief in a just God.
Consequently Christians may in a variety of ways attempt to justify injustice
rather than to correct it. Like Job's friends and Jesus' disciples, we may still
view suffering as God's punishment for personal sin. Or we conclude from the
story of Job that for Christians suffering is a test of their faith, intended to
draw them closer to God; for unbelievers, it is God's attempt to transform them.
A third variation is that God will balance present suffering with future reward
- if not in this life, then in the next.

In any case, we err when we pretend to know God's will and fail
to follow the command to "do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly
with [our] God" (Mic 6:8 RSV).

Our view of God and how he works in this world has important
implications for our social attitudes. Believing in a just and active God seems
to provide no assurance that we will act justly. Paradoxically, that very belief
may contribute not to justice but to justification of the present. Christians
need to recognize that God acts through his people. That is, God works his love
and justice in this world through Christians' obedience to his Word. If we
believe that God works in this world through us, we will be motivated to work
toward greater social justice. Such activity is the proper result of belief in a
just God.

Melvin Lerner thinks the belief in a just world may originate
and develop at an early age. He maintains that through maturation and experience
young children develop a "personal contract" with themselves. They "agree" to
forgo immediate rewards and endure self-deprivation in exchange for greater
rewards to be achieved through personal effort in the future. In forming this
personal contract, they orient themselves to the world on the basis of what can
be earned or deserved rather than on the basis of what can be obtained at the
moment.

Lerner argues that since children need to believe that they will
receive the outcomes they deserve, they are motivated to believe that others
must also get what they deserve. Becoming aware that others do not get what they
deserve would constitute a threat to the personal contract. So as long as people
maintain the contract, they will care about whether they live in a just world.
The concern for justice, says Lerner, has its basis, first of all, in a
commitment to deserving one's own outcomes. Lerner states, "Personal deserving
then is both conceptually and motivationally prior to justice for others." It
follows that concern for the plight of others will often be overshadowed by
concern for one's own outcomes.

There is a striking parallel between Lerner's notion and how
some Christians view their relationship to God. Some Christians seem to regard
faith as a negotiating tool or bargaining chip with God. They agree to hold
certain beliefs and even to conduct themselves in certain ways in exchange for
God's favor. Fundamental to this kind of faith is the belief that "God will
bless me if I am good and punish me if I am bad."

The attempt to merit God's favor becomes most obvious, of
course, when we are in greatest need. Not only do our prayers become more
fervent, but we become conscious of conforming our lifestyle to God's will.
Miron Zuckerman recently reported a series of ingenious experiments in which he
demonstrated that, in time of personal need, those with a strong belief in a
just world were significantly more responsive to requests for
help.6They would give aid even if the assisted
people could in no way reciprocate. Zuckerman reasoned that, by responding to
the need of another, helpers hoped to earn or deserve a favorable outcome
themselves.

Typically, "faith as contract," like Lerner's personal contract,
is future-oriented. I postpone immediate gratification in exchange for future
reward. Living the Christian life is a "vale of tears" which will eventually pay
off in God granting me salvation and eternal life. Implicit in such a
reward-and-punishment theology is a commitment to personal deserving. Christians
holding such a perspective fail to recognize that faith itself is a
gift of God, and that in the work of Jesus Christ they have life
now, abundantly. Mature Christians know that God's grace is unearned, and
that the abundance comes in knowing him - not in what he gives.

Our relationship with God will likely become the model for our
relationship with others. To the degree we view our relationship with God as a
contract based on personal deserving, we are likely to be oriented toward
personal deserving in our relationships with others. There will always be these
questions: What consequences will my helping others have for me? Has the other
person really earned my respect and my help? Is the need legitimate? To what
extent is the sufferer responsible for his or her own misery?

Such a Christian misses the God of Scripture who commands that
we protect the poor, the widow, the orphan, without asking how they became poor,
widowed or orphaned in the first place. In short, this Christian's relationships
with others will be no different from those of unbelievers who are first of all
concerned about preserving a personal contract and living in a world where
outcomes are deserved.

We are released from the chains of our just-world assumptions
when we begin to realize that we honestly don't want what we really deserve.
When we face our deep need and our just-as-deep unworthiness of getting that
need met, we are ready for God's mercy. We are freed to gratefully receive what
we haven't earned, the love of a just God who out of his abundance gave his Son
to redeem us. Those who have experienced God's mercy and grace look on their
social context with new eyes. Having been forgiven, they forgive. Having
experienced grace, they are gracious in their dealings with people. Faith for
them is not something they use to barter with God; it is a gift which shapes
their lifestyle and attitudes toward others.

In simple obedience to God's Word and in gratitude for what he
has done, we will love others without concern for the "rewards and costs" of
such action, without asking whether others deserve our help and without
wondering whether their needs are legitimate. The way God has loved us will
provide the model for how we are to love others.

Justice: A Community Project

Lerner has demonstrated that the concern for a just world is a
double-edged sword. I have emphasized here the less obvious, that is, how this
desire for justice can perpetuate injustice. The need for a just world can also
foster constructive social change, of course. Many attempt to reduce
injustice.

Research indicates that the path which people ultimately follow
- whether they seek to justify or to correct injustice - depends to a large
extent on how available to them are the resources for eliminating the injustice.
If people feel powerless or do not know what remedial action to pursue, they are
more likely to justify the suffering of others. If, on the other hand, they can
help and know how to provide assistance, they are more likely to seek to
eliminate injustice. To persuade others that injustice exists without at the
same time suggesting or providing the means to eliminate the injustice may be
more detrimental than beneficial.

In recent years the church seems to have become more sensitive
to, and concerned about, relationships between people as well as the
individual's relationship to God. In many respects it is returning to the kinds
of social concerns always evident in the historic church until this century.
Concern for social justice is growing. But when the church preaches against
injustice, it must at the same time develop specific programs to correct
injustice. Otherwise, the response might be, "So what can I do about poverty,
hunger, racial discrimination? Anyone in this land can make it if he really
wants to. And if the leaders of underdeveloped countries were not so corrupt,
they would have enough food to feed everyone." The person in the pew who is not
provided guidelines on what can be done may end up justifying rather than trying
to eliminate the injustice.

Finally, reducing injustice must be a community task. As we
observed in chapter eight, we not only need each other to identify sources of
injustice but also to develop and to support the means for alleviating it.
Confronted with the magnitude of the problem, individuals quickly withdraw or,
as we have seen, even deny its existence. We do not readily enter the world of
victims alone. Research suggests that if we believe our resources will have only
limited impact, then chances are we will avoid trying to help
entirely.7Only by working together as a body of
believers, sensitive to God's directive, can we mount an effective attack on
injustice.

14

Blessed Are the
Peacemakers

"BLESSED ARE
THE peacemakers." A noble and agreeable thought. If
anything should characterize our relations with others, it is peace.

But what is peace, and how can we make it? Here the agreement
ends. Both Soviet and American leaders claim they seek peace. Both military
spending proponents and disarmament advocates act in the name of peace.
Guerrilla warriors are "freedom fighters" seeking a just peace; the military
governments they oppose are trying to "maintain peace." Again, what is peace,
and how can we make it?

The biblical vision of peace is two-dimensional. First, it is
nonviolent, loving relationships. Jesus foresaw that we would suffer
disagreements, sometimes to the point of seeing our neighbor as an enemy. Yet he
counseled us to extend love even to those enemies. Shalom, the Old Testament
word for peace, includes in its meaning physical, material, emotional and
spiritual well-being. So the second dimension of peacemaking is to create the
conditions necessary for Shalom, well-being.

People tend to focus on one dimension or the other - to become
either peacekeepers (keeping things calm and "peaceful") or peacemakers
(creating the conditions for well-being among those who do not have Shalom).
Typically, the haves, who already enjoy well-being, are content with
the economic and political institutions that provide their well-being and
protect their peace. The have-nots more often feel a need for reform,
for creating the conditions for improved well-being.

But why do the haves so often choose to keep rather than make
peace? And why do both haves and have-nots find it so hard to love their
enemies? As we look at these complex questions, we will see the interplay of
several behavioral principles discussed already.

Justifying Injustice

Pope Paul VI has said, "If you want peace, work for justice."
And what is justice? Most people think of justice as equity. When I perceive
that the ratio of my outcomes to my inputs is equal to yours, I will consider
the situation just; we both get what we merit. The key word here is
perceive, however, for what I perceive to be equitable you may not. For
example, in experiments those who are overrewarded - the haves - are much slower
to notice the inequity than the underrewarded - the have-nots.1 This
sets the stage for conflict.

If compassionate haves do notice someone's misery, they may
still be unmoved. Why? Why are good people so often tolerant of injustice? Part
of the answer arises from the ironic just-world phenomenon. Believing that the
world is just - that people deserve what they get - blinds us to injustice. If
we infer from the high unemployment rate of young Black men that they must merit
such a fate, then voila'! Justice reigns. Adversity is recognized; but
if we can agree with Job's friends that the world is just and the adversity
deserved, then we need not get upset about it.

Indeed, we might even blame the victims: "I made it with out
handouts, and they could too if only they had some ambition." To take an extreme
case, slavemasters may likely view their slaves as having just those traits -
laziness, irresponsibility - which justify continuing their slavery. So
prejudice comes to reinforce the social and economic superiority of people with
wealth and power.

This tendency is accentuated by another phenomenon, the
fundamental attribution error. When we're observing other people's
actions, our attention is on them, not on their situation; so we tend
to attribute their behavior to their dispositions. When we act, however, our
attention is more likely focused on the situation we are responding to. Thus we
may infer that "Sharon is outgoing and Judy is shy. But with me it all depends
on the situation." David Napolitan and George Goethals demonstrated this
fundamental attribution error by having Williams College students talk with a
young woman who acted either warm or aloof.2Half were told the truth
- that for purposes of the experiment she was feigning either friendly or
unfriendly behavior. Did the students use this in formation? No. If she acted
friendly, they assumed she really had a friendly disposition. If she acted
unfriendly, they assumed she really was an unfriendly person.

Similarly, haves may attribute unemployment or unfriendly
behavior to people's "lazy" or "hostile" dispositions, while the people
themselves blame it on social stress and injustice. Experiments suggest that if
our perspective were to change, if we were to see the world through their eyes,
our analyses would likely change as well.3

Being aware of these powerful tendencies is a necessary first
step toward creating Shalom. If we realize that our perspective as outside
observers focuses attention on the blameworthy characteristics of those who lack
well-being, then we can purposely expand our perspective. Involving people from
other economic classes within our fellowship circles, for example, will surely
increase our empathy and help us to rejoice with those who rejoice and to weep
with those who weep.

So that is one barrier to Shalom: The haves tend to justify and
thereby perpetuate injustice. The task of biblical peace-making is to dismantle
this barrier, enabling people to recognize injustice. The other task is to
promote nonviolent, loving relationships by enabling people to see even their
enemies as neighbors. Often we do the reverse, perceiving our global neighbors
as our enemies.

The Stereotyped Enemy

We considered earlier several sources of distorted enemy images.
The self-serving bias can seed prejudice in any of its several forms - racism,
sexism, nationalism and other such deadly chauvinisms. "My group " - my race, my
sex, my country - is presumed superior to yours. The tendency to self-justify
further inclines people to deny the wrong of their evil acts. What is more, we
filter and interpret information to fit our preconceptions.

Given these insidious phenomena, it is not surprising that
people in conflict frequently form distorted, diabolical images of one another.
To a curious degree, these distorted images are similar; they are mirror images.
Each views the other as untrustworthy and evil-intentioned.

The war of words between the United States and the Soviet Union
offers many examples of each side's attributing the same virtues to itself and
the same vices to the enemy. Former Soviet Premier Brezhnev said that "American
'adventurism, rudeness, and undisguised egoism' threatened to 'push the world
into the flames of a nuclear war.' " In a similar vein, the Soviet Defense
Minister said that "the aggressive forces of imperialism, primarily the U.S.A.,
have led the intensity of their military preparations to an unusual level, are
fanning the flames of armed conflict in different regions of the world, and
irresponsibly are threatening to use nuclear weapons." Of their own motives,
Brezhnev said, "I should like to emphasize that the essence of our policy is
peaceableness, the sincere striving for equitable and fruitful cooperation." The
words could as well have been spoken by President Reagan, who has often
expressed mirror-image views; for example, "You often hear that the United
States and the Soviet Union are in an arms race. The truth is, that while the
Soviet Union has raced, we have not."4

Mirror imaging is supported and encouraged by each nation's
ethnocentrism, the overevaluation of one's own group in comparison with other
groups, especially those we perceive as rivals. A study sponsored by UNESCO just
after World War 2 illustrates this tendency.5One thousand people
from nine countries were given a list of twelve adjectives and asked to choose
those that applied to themselves, the Americans and the Russians. All the
national groups in the study agreed on one point: their own nation was the most
peace-loving.

Ethnocentrism leads us to judge events in our world with a
double standard, or to exhibit what has been called the mote-beam phenomenon. We
overestimate the evil characteristics of the enemy and underestimate our own.
After showing American fifth and sixth graders photographs of Russian roads
lined with trees, a psychologist asked the children why Russians have trees
along their roads.6"So that people won't be able to see what's going
on beyond the road,"and, "It's to make work for the prisoners" were the two
answers received. And why did some American roads have trees along the side?
"Oh," the children said, "For shade," or, "To keep the dust down."

Stereotyping also shapes our image of the enemy. A stereotype
simplifies our world by providing a shorthand category for strangers. Its
unfortunate effect is the tendency to overgeneralize and produce false images.
We may assume that all Soviet people are Communists when, in fact, only a
fraction are. Or we may stereotype Russians as atheists, though in reality some
ninety million people - more than five times the number of Soviet Communist
Party members - belong to Christian churches.

Stereotypes contribute to ill feelings toward our neighbors
because they substitute generalized images for accurate ones and thus serve to
justify hostile behavior. If we consider the U.S.S.R. a nation of atheistic
Communists, it becomes easier to distrust them, dislike them and assume they
have evil motives. While we might consider it morally unthinkable to point
nuclear warheads at a nation of people who eat, play and work like us,
threatening the lives of our stereotyped enemy is another matter.

The dangers of forming an enemy image become clear when we
examine how psychological factors fuel the arms race. Why do they propose arms
control? For propaganda purposes. Why do we propose arms control? Because we
desire peace. Our images may be true and theirs false. But, given the universal
self-serving bias confirmed through research, it is more likely that our
ethnocentrism and use of double standards lead us to disparage the enemy. Each
nation states, moreover, that "our strategic nuclear weapons are defensive,
whereas theirs are aggressive." And each nation selectively reports armaments to
make its enemy appear the stronger. In the early 1980s we heard American leaders
complain that "the Soviets have more land-based missiles and more nuclear
megatonage." Russian leaders complained that "the Americans have more submarine
and air-launched missiles and greater warhead accuracy." Thus both sides could
justify their "needs" to build new, more devastating weapons. Small wonder that
arms-control talks progress slowly!

The enemy image also promotes a willingness to use violence,
even nuclear weapons. After we have characterized a group of people as "the
enemy," it is natural and easy to dehumanize them. This tendency to transform
the enemy into something subhuman allows a soldier to kill a fellow human being.
People become Communists and fascists, Japs and gooks. Killing an ideology,
especially one that appears to threaten our basic freedoms, is much easier than
killing a familiar person.

The enemy image also supports the policy of deterrence.
Deterrence seeks to prevent war with the threat that any attack will be met by
an intolerable retaliation. Deterrence policies grow out of mutual distrust: you
may attack me, since I know the kind of enemy you are, so I will build up my
potential for counterattack. When both sides have this mirror image of each
other and tend to misperceive the other's motives (you're aggressive; I'm
defensive), there exist all the ingredients for an upward spiral of hostilities.
Both sides say, "It looks like my enemy is in an arms race, preparing to gain
the superior power necessary to attack me." Thus each defines its own behavior
as increased "defense" spending in response to the other's attempt to gain
nuclear superiority.

The following rhetoric, for example, reported by the Associated
Press, could have originated with either the United States or the U.S.S.R. Who
do you think was responsible?

(Reagan/Andropov) acknowledged (Washington's/the Kremlin's)
military might had grown in the last decade, but said the (United States/Soviet
Union) had been compelled to strengthen itself because of the "feverish
(U.S.S.R./U.S.)effort to establish bases near (American/ Soviet
territory)" and to counter "the (U.S.S.R./U.S.)military superiority for
which (Moscow/Washington) is now pining so much."

In fact, Soviet leader Andropov is responsible for these words.
But the words have a familiar sound when put in Reagan's mouth. As a result of
such mirror images, hostilities increase rather than decrease. Moreover, the
psychological dynamics involved in the strategy of deterrence-fear, distrust,
misperception, threats - actually accelerate arming for war. It is safer to risk
the costs and dangers of an arms race than to chance the enemy's cheating and
gaining an attack advantage. So the arms race spirals while, ironically, both
sides claim that peace and disarmament are their high priorities.

The Call to Peacemaking

We are called to be peacemakers. With so many barriers to peace,
however, the task may seem hopeless. Surmounting so many obstacles would require
a miracle! But talk about miracles is more than a figure of speech for Christian
peace makers. The language of faith speaks of peace with miracle language: peace
is a gift from God; peace is part of the "new creation"; peace comes from
transformation, conversion, discovery.

A familiar story told of St. Francis of Assisi illustrates the
miracle of peacemaking, especially in terms of the transformation of individual
attitude change. St. Francis had always felt a particular disgust for lepers. In
fact, he panicked every time he saw one! One day, walking along the road below
Assisi, he saw one of those disgusting lepers coming toward him. His knees went
limp, and as the leper came closer, the odor of rotting flesh attacked Francis's
sense so powerfully that it seemed he was smelling with his eyes and ears as
well as his nose. But this time Francis did one of those surprising things that
only the power of Jesus' Spirit could explain. Despite his revulsion, he reached
out and touched the leper - threw his arms around the leper's neck and kissed
his cheek - whereupon Francis's hatred was turned to
love.7

St. Francis devoted much of his remaining life to bringing
Shalom, God's peace, into the empty lives of lepers. How can we explain the
change? His change in attitude was preceded by a change in action: one day
Francis kissed a leper. That act established a new relationship in which Francis
was able to discover something new about enemies and, as a result, about
peacemaking.

Francis's experience fits in with the psychological principles
we have been discussing. Perhaps Francis had concluded that lepers somehow
deserved their fate, believing that "whatever is, is just." Maybe the leper was
being punished for his sins, and any assistance would constitute interference
with divine retribution. Perhaps Francis's image of this "enemy" was based on
generalizations, stereotypes and folklore rather than on the real nature of
lepers. Certainly Francis had dehumanized the leper, consigning him to a
subclass of creatures. After all, one ran a risk of social rejection and
contamination by establishing contact with a leper.

But Francis reached out to the leper and broke through the
barriers that normally maintained the adversarial relationship. We can surmise
that in doing so Francis recognized some of the key principles that are
foundational for all Christian peacemaking.

First, contact with our enemies usually reveals a surprising
discovery: they are real people with the same mixture of loves, hopes, concerns
and sins that we have. An enemy may seem disgusting, but with a good dose of
honesty we can recognize that we are not without our faults either. And as we
recoil in self-defense ("Hey, I'm not all that bad when you get to know me"), we
realize that the same truth applies to our enemies. This experience is a
discovery of our common humanity. It turns upside down our common tendency to
dehumanize enemies and reminds us that we are all God's creatures whom he loves
and sustains. The distinctions, stereotypes and negative images we use to
alienate ourselves from brothers and sisters in the human family are all less
real than our unity with them. Paul explained that our divisions are erased in
the unity of Christ: "There is neither Jew nor Greek [cultural and religious
division], slave nor free [economic or class distinction], male nor female (sex
difference], for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal 3:28 NIV; see also Col
3:11).

Second, peacemakers aren't asked to deny the evil
characteristics of others, but rather to respond with reconciling love. In the
mystery of his transformation, Francis was moved to respond in a new way to the
leper's disgusting characteristics. The new response was love and acceptance.
This teaching of Jesus was so radically new that its novelty is still
unsettling: But I say to you, love your enemies! (Mt 5:44).

Jesus replaced retaliation with reconciliation, introducing an
entirely new way of relating to the neighbor who is "enemy." Jesus' own way of
responding to those who opposed him provides the model, as Paul notes: "God
shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us....
While we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son" (Rom
5:8, 10 RSV). The Christian makes peace as God does - through acts of
reconciling love. We must do to our enemies not as they do to us, but as God has
done to us in Jesus Christ.

Third, peacemaking involves risk. Kissing the leper was an act
of courage, and Francis couldn't know what to expect. Nor can we. We cannot know
what extending justice to the poor will mean for our own standard of living. We
risk living with less. We cannot know in advance how our enemy will respond to
our acts of good will, though when we remember that our enemies are more human
and humane than our images of them, we need not be totally pessimistic. But
Christian peacemakers must recognize in their endeavors the "risk of the cross."
Among other things, the cross reminds us that good does not always meet with
immediate success in a world where evil is a reality. But the empty cross is
also a symbol of hope. Resurrection is an important part of peace making,
serving as a reminder that on Easter morning God's verdict came down on the side
of suffering love.

Part
IVStudying

PEOPLE ARE FASCINATING. We
are all different. We are all alike. We are simple. We are complex. Learning
more about people is something we all do throughout our lives, whether we are
social psychologists or parents or farmers or stockbrokers. And the topic is
never exhausted. There are always new discoveries to make. There is always
something to learn about humanity.

In the past fourteen chapters we have looked at how one
discipline, social psychology, approaches the study of human nature. Now we
would like to turn the tables a bit and study social psychology. Should we study
people in the way that it does? How legitimate is this method? What can be
learned that we can't discover in other ways? What are its limitations? In
answering these questions, wehope to put this book in the broader
context of God's call for us to know him and his works.

15

Called to
Understand

CHRISTIANS HAVE GOOD reasons
to pursue scholarly inquiry into human nature and human relationships. As God's
stewards in this world, we are called to understand and care for all of his
creation, especially his people. The second table of the law makes knowledge and
understanding of our interpersonal relationships paramount. Moreover, if our
vocation is ultimately to know and serve God, and if John Calvin was right in
saying that we can't have a clear knowledge of God without a corresponding
knowledge of ourselves, then the pursuit of self-knowledge is indeed a religious
duty. Probing the mystery of human nature is part of worshiping God with our
minds. Christian psychologists thus see their study and research as a Christian
activity.

Most books on psychology and religion have drawn upon
personality theory, psychotherapy and counseling. While these are important
areas, they actually represent only a small part of psychology - perhaps two
chapters out of twenty in an introductory text. Our goal here has been to
introduce a newer specialty, social psychology, and to consider its implications
for Christian faith and life. It is our hope that these insights about human
nature will be used to build up the church in Christlikeness.

But Why a "Science" of Human Nature?

If the search for self-understanding is a Christian obligation,
then we should pursue the truth vigorously and on all fronts, wherever it may be
found. There is not a square inch of the whole world of which God does not say,
"This is mine," for if God is anything he is the Creator - the author of all
truth. And believing that "all truth is God's truth," we need not be afraid of
what we find, no matter how surprising or unsettling the discovery may be. We
have a final security from which to survey everything with freedom and openness.
Of all people, we should be most attentive and open to new insights and to
reformulations of our existing beliefs.1

Knowing that this is our Father's world motivates us to search
God's works as well as his Word. Scientific data are part of God's truth as well
as scriptural revelation, and thus we respect the insights that come through
both natural and biblical revelation. This attitude has motivated scholars for
centuries. Contrary to the popular idea that science and religion are enemies,
modern science was actually nurtured by the Christian world view. Many of its
founders - people like Blaise Pascal, Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton - drew
encouragement from the Bible. They believed that the creation was God's good
gift and that whatever they discovered was ultimately his. Reflecting that same
attitude today, we welcome the scientific study of human nature and social
behavior. We see psychological research in Christian terms - as one way of
exploring God's general revelation.

The Ethics of Experimentation

None of this is to argue, of course, that the application of the
scientific method to the study of human nature is without its pitfalls. Although
our look at social psychology has not been comprehensive, the studies we have
introduced are representative of how social psychologists do their work. They
raise questions that do not usually occur in the scientific study of the
nonhuman aspects of the world. Is it right to study people the same way we study
behavior among zebras? Is it ethical to experiment with people to learn how we
behave?

To obtain useful information about people's social behavior,
researchers sometimes temporarily deceive and distress their participants.
Perhaps the most controversial study described in this book is Stanley Milgram's
investigations of obedience to authority in which he found the majority of
average citizens willing to administer intense shock to an other person in
compliance with the experimenter's command. Not only were all participants
temporarily deceived, but for many the experience was extremely stressful.
Critics have argued that participants' self-concept may even have been altered.
One participant's wife told him, "You can call yourself Eichmann."

In defending his study Milgram points not only to its important
lessons and potential benefits for humanity, but also to the support he received
from the participants themselves after the deception was revealed and the
experiment explained. When surveyed later, 84 per cent said they were glad to
have participated; only 1per cent regretted volunteering. A year later,
a psychiatrist interviewed forty of those who had suffered most and concluded
that, despite the temporary stress, no one was
hurt.2

Do the insights gained through research justify the discomfort
caused participants? John Darley and Bibb Latane's famous studies of altruism
also highlight the researcher's ethical dilemma.3To
determine how the presence of bystanders may influence an individual's reaction
to a call for help, Darley and Latane' asked university students to discuss over
a laboratory intercom their problems with campus life. To guarantee their
anonymity, students were told they would not see each other nor would the
experimenter eavesdrop. During the ensuing discussion, the participants heard
one participant, the experimenter's accomplice, lapse into an epileptic seizure
in which he pleaded for someone to help. Of those participants led to believe
they were the only listener, 85 per cent sought help. Of those who believed four
others also overheard the victim, only 31 per cent went for help. While these
results are highly informative, participants had been deceived and most also
found the laboratory experience stressful. Many of them had trembling hands and
sweaty palms. Should the experiment have been conducted?

Two things should be said in defense of the researchers. First,
they were careful to debrief their participants, explaining the experiment and
its purposes. After this debriefing the experimenters also gave the participants
a questionnaire. One hundred per cent said that the deception was justified and
that they would be willing to participate in similar experiments in the future.
None of the participants said they were angry at the experimenter. Other
researchers similarly report that the overwhelming majority of subjects in such
experiments say afterward that their participation was both instructive and
ethically justified.

Some readers may ask if this is not a case of
the-end-justifies-the-means thinking. The moral choice is not always clear,
however, particularly when we must choose between the more positive of two goods
or the lesser of two evils. When the choice is finally made, the critic can
always counter, "Sounds like ends-justifying-means thinking!" (regard less of
the choice made). Consider the example of Nazis inquiring about Jews in the
attic. If the moral choice is to lie in order to preserve the lives of innocent
people, can't the critic ask "So the end justifies the means?" The researcher
has a twofold ethical obligation - to protect participants and to
enhance human welfare. Not doing experimental research (even research
involving temporary deception) also has ethical implications.

In recent years investigators have become increasingly sensitive
to the well-being of those who volunteer for experiments. Ethical principles
developed by the American Psychological Association presently require
investigators to do the following:

Tell potential participants enough about the experiment to
enable them to give their informed consent.

Be truthful and alert to alternative procedures to deception. If some other viable procedure can be found, it should be used.

Protect people from harm and significant discomfort.

Treat information about the individual participants
confidentially.

Fully explain the experiment afterward, including any
deception. The only exception to this rule is when feed back would be brutal,
making people think they have been stupid or cruel.

Psychologists, as indicated above, have a responsibility both to
protect participants and to enhance human welfare by discovering influences on
human behavior. Research guidelines must always recognize, as the above do, this
twofold ethical obligation.

What Can We Learn from the Science of Human Nature?

We have attempted to show how social psychological research can
inform and challenge individual Christians and the Christian community. As
Arthur Holmes has observed, to believe that God's Word is the final rule of
faith and conduct does not mean that all truth is either contained in
the Bible or deducible from it.4 Scripture is not an
exhaustive revelation of everything to be known. Biblical revelation does not
provide the content of politics, economics or engineering. And while it reveals
the most important information about the human condition - our ultimate origin,
our condition and our destiny - on scientific matters the Bible is obviously in
complete. Scripture provides no theory of human memory. It offers no analysis of
persuasion, no conceptualization of group influence. While biblical revelation
informs us that human judgment is clouded, it does not provide specific -
information on how people form and sustain false beliefs, nor on what
contributes to effective group decision making.

Does this mean that biblical and scientific views of the person
are totally unrelated, that one merely takes up where the other leaves off?
Certainly not. Both make claims about human nature and offer propositions
concerning observable experience. Both speak to the ways we think about,
influence and relate to each other. Both are concerned with our
self-perceptions, with conformity and independence, with loving and hating. If
all truth is God's truth then all truth must be one, for God does not contradict
himself. Since all revelation has its source in God, a fundamental unity exists
between biblical and scientific accounts of human nature. They do indeed have
common ground.

We have explored some of those significant connections. We have
noted how the ancient biblical view of human nature as self-serving is receiving
remarkable support from the emerging scientific view. In affirming and
enlivening ancient biblical truths the "new" understandings of social psychology
strengthen the credibility of biblical faith in this modern age. Seeing the
parallels not only renews our appreciation for the biblical idea, but it prompts
us to sharpen and clarify its meaning.

Those Points of Tension

But what about those possible points of tension? If all truth is
one, why do inconsistencies sometimes exist between psychological and Christian
understandings of human nature? And how do we resolve them?

In some cases conflict between scientific and religious accounts
may be only apparent. Each account has its unique purpose, approach, focus and
vocabulary. Operating at different levels, they may not be competing so much as
complementary accounts of human nature.

We can view human nature and human relationships from a whole
range of perspectives. Which viewpoint is most relevant will depend on the
particular question we want answered. For example, in observing human
aggression, a physiologist might note what changes in a person's brain state or
blood chemistry typically accompany aggressive action.5A psychologist might note how frustration or the inability to achieve some
specific goal in life often leads to aggression. A sociologist might study how
social norms permit or restrict the expression of aggression within society. A
theologian might describe aggression in terms of our alienation from God and one
another.

Are these various perspectives in conflict? Not at all. Each
provides a different way of looking at the same event. Each informs and
contributes to our understanding of behavior, and one is not necessarily
superior to the others. They complement rather than conflict with one another.
Thus in identifying physical, psychological or social causes for human
aggression, we need not deny that antisocial conduct has its basis in sin.
Rather we more clearly understand sin's mechanisms. All the views are of
interest to Christians.

In some cases, however, genuine conflict arises between
psychological accounts and what we understand the Bible to be telling us. If
psychology and Christianity are not to become insulated from each other, these
points of tension will have to be explored and eventually resolved. We need,
however, to understand the fallibility of both science and theology.

Contrary to its popular image, science is not as objective as
most people think. Investigators don't merely read what's in the book of nature;
their eyes are not mirrors humbly reflecting reality. We've already seen that
one of the most significant facts about our minds is how much our preconceived
notions bias the way we interpret the information that comes to us. Personal
values shape the psychologist's choice of research topics, the questions raised,
the methods applied and the interpretations given the data. Values are implicit
in the very concepts of the discipline. A significant challenge therefore awaits
Christian psychologists. They can be "salt of the earth" and "leaven in the
loaf" by exposing concealed presumptions and hidden values. They can offer a
perspective shaped by Christian beliefs and values.

However, just as scientific models of human nature are colored
by the psychologist's presuppositions, so also is the theorizing of theologians
subtly shaped by their underlying assumptions, background and personal values.
This means we should be as wary to subject science to religious dogma as we are
to conform religious beliefs to scientific inquiry. Either our psychological
theorizing may be wrong or we may have wrongly interpreted Scripture. On
occasion Christians have gained a more correct understanding of biblical truth
by the revelations of scientific research. The insights of modern ecology, for
example, have revolutionized our understanding of what it means to have dominion
over the earth.

So both scriptural and scientific data are part of God's
revelation to us, and we can respect the insights that come through either
biblical or natural revelation. However, since our interpretations of both
biblical and scientific data are colored by our presuppositions, we must be wary
of absolutizing any human interpretation of Scripture or of nature. We view both
through our own spectacles.

We hope this book helps bridge psychological research and
Christian faith. The two are not enemies but allies. Having probed human
behavior through recent research and seen its correspondence with Scripture, we
want to encourage God's people toward effective Christian living: believing,
influencing and relating with Christlikeness.

2SeeAmitai Etzioni, "Human Beings
Are Not Very Easy to Change after All," SaturdayReview, 3 June
1972, pp. 45-47.

3JonathanL. Freedman and Scott C.
Fraser, "Compliance without Pressure: The Foot-in-the-Door Technique,"
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology4(1966):195-202.

4StanleyMilgram, "Some Conditions
of Obedience and Disobedience to Authority," Human Relations 18
(1965): 57-75. Although the victim was not actually shocked, this experiment has
nevertheless been sufficiently controversial to serve as a stimulus for reforms
in professional psychological research ethics.

5See Keith E. Davis and Edward E. Jones,
"Changes in Interpersonal Perception as a Means of Reducing Cognitive
Dissonance," Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 61
(1960):402-10; David C. Glass, "Changes In Liking as a Means of Reducing
Cognitive Discrepancies between Self-Esteem and Aggression," Journal of
Personality 32 (1964): 531-49.

1Barry Singer and Victor Benassi, "Fooling
Some of the People All of the Time," Skeptical Inquirer 5 (2)
(1980-81):17-24.

2CharlesG. Lord, Lee Ross and
Mark Lepper, "Biased Assimilation and Attitude Polarization: The Effects of
Prior Theories on Subsequently Considered Evidence," Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology 37 (1979):2098-109.

3CraigA. Anderson, Mark R. Lepper
and Lee D. Ross, "Perseverance of Social Theories: The Role of Explanation in
the Persistence of Discredited Information," Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology 39 (1980):1037-49.

4ElizabethF. Loftus and John C.
Palmer, "Reconstruction of Automobile Destruction: An Example of the Interaction
between Language and Memory," Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal
Behavior 13 (1973): 585-89.

11Mark Snyder, Elizabeth D. Tanke and Ellen
Berscheid, "Social Perception and Interpersonal Behavior: On the Self-Fulfilling
Nature of Social Stereotypes," Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology 35 (1977):656-66.

6Fred Ayeroff
and Robert P. Abelson, "ESP and ESB: Belief in Personal Success at Mental
Telepathy," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 34
(1976):240-47.

7See, for example, the following books which
examine the reliability of Christian faith claims: Clark Pinnock, Reason
Enough; Frank Morison, Who Moved the Stone?; F. F. Bruce,
The New Testament Documents:Are They Reliable?; William Dyrness,
Christian Apologetics; and Paul E. Little, Know Why You
Believe (all published in Downers Grove, Ill., by InterVarsity
Press).

4MarkR. Lepper and David Greene, "Turning
Play into Work: Effects of Adult Surveillance and Extrinsic Rewards on
Children's Intrinsic Motivation," Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology 31 (1975):479-86.

7ClineSeligman, Russell Fazlo and Mark Zanna, "Effects of Salience of Extrinsic
Rewards on Liking and Loving," Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology 38 (1980):453-60. Sensitive to ethical concerns, the researchers
debriefed all the participants afterward and later confirmed that the experiment
had no long-term effects on the participants'
relationships.

5Marshall Dermer, Sidney J. Cohen, Elaine Jacobsen and
Erling A. Anderson, "Evaluative Judgments of Aspects of Life as a Function of
Vicarious Exposure to Hedonic Extremes," Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology 37 (1979):247-60.

Chapter 12:
And Who Is My Neighbor?1John
M. Darley and C. Daniel Batson, " 'From Jerusalem to Jericho': A Study of
Situational and Dispositional Variables in Helping Behavior," Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology 27 (1973):100-108.